by Deck Davis
“Never thought I’d see the day when the academy is cowering,” said Lolo.
“If we sit and let them force their way in, then we’ll be trapped in the academy like rats in a tunnel. We need to face them in the open,” said Mason. “We lock the younger students in, sure. Anyone over fourteen is going to have to fight.”
“Fourteen?” said Tomkins. “They’re still kids. All the parents out there who entrusted them to us…”
Jakub knew that Tomkins was thinking about his own son now, about his own grief, and he understood it.
He also saw sense in what Mason was saying. The academy had protections, but it was never built to withstand an assault. After all, why would it? Nothing like this had ever happened; the academy was a branch of the royal tree, and should have enjoyed royal protections. But if the queen’s uncle really had joined with Bendeldrick, if the guardship wouldn’t help them…what choice did they have?
Mason paced. “The numbers don’t work. Fucking hells!”
“There might be something we can do,” said Jakub.
They stared at him now, but he didn’t feel uncomfortable this time. He rolled up his sleeves and showed them his glyphlines.
“Jakub…” said Irvine. “You’re a journeyman now? And that shade. Wait…you chose the Raiser?”
Lolo gasped. “Jakub? Why would you do such a thing? The academy-”
“The academy left me to look after myself. Sure, I could have chosen the Tapper; I know that’s what you prefer. A nice, controllable shade.”
“We always taught you to think carefully about the shades,” said Irvine.
“And you always taught loyalty; but where was that when it came to it?”
“This isn’t the time.”
“You’re right. We don’t have any time. So, here’s what I suggest…”
CHAPTER 99
Irvine and Lolo gathered up the younger students and herded them beneath the academy, to the basements where there was a secondary mana boundary that would protect them.
Mason, Witas and Tomkins called the older students to the yard – those with glyphlines, or those soon to graduate - and explained everything. Tomkins handed out what weapons he had in the stores, while Mason barked his orders, and Witas tried to add a softer edge to what the warlock said in order to keep the students calm.
Jakub, meanwhile, edged around the academy, past the sword training yards, beyond the mages’ practice area, until he found the graveyard of the familiars.
This was where they buried the animals that certain mage disciplines bonded to them as their familiars. Unlike the creatures that warlocks or necromancers travelled with, these animals were flesh and blood like any other.
That was the key – as flesh and blood, these animals lived and died as any other; some from sickness, others from wounds taken while out on assignments, others from old age.
It meant that they could be brought back. Most were long-dead, their resurrection windows firmly closed, but that didn’t stop a necromancer who had chosen the Raiser shade.
Jakub took out his soul necklace. It was full now, after Irvine had reluctantly given him permission to drain essence from the academies’ supply.
Jakub stared at the dozens of graves. He didn’t look at what was written on them, but instead focussed on each and spoke his Reanimate spellword.
By the time he’d uttered it a dozen times, the earth near the graves broke, and forms began to push through.
The long-dead ones were just bones, only fused together by the magic that his reanimate spell wrought. Others still had rotten flesh and hair clinging to them.
Whatever their state, they all answered his call.
*Necromancy EXP Gained!*
[IIIIIIIII ]
Soon, Jakub had twelve of the creatures with him; wargs, hounds, falcons, a menagerie of dead creatures waiting for him to command them.
With that, with their stench drifting behind him, Jakub left the graveyard and crossed to the main grounds of the academy.
Mason, Witas, Tomkins, Abbie and a plethora of students turned to face him on his arrival, some of them whispering to each other, others looking terrified.
A girl broke from the crowd and bolted toward him, her arms outstretched.
Another hug? I wish I’d known getting expelled would make me so popular.
She passed by Jakub and stopped in front of a warg, and she put her arms around it. This was the most recently dead animal of the bunch, and it bore the poor girl’s hugs impassively.
“Jurnty,” she said, seemingly oblivious to the smell of death that clung to the animal.
Jakub was going to tell her that it was not really alive; that reanimation wasn’t true resurrection, but he stopped himself.
Let her have this, he thought.
As he looked at the students gathered in the yards, some with steely looks in their eyes, others nervously scratching their glyphlines, he saw something beyond them.
A crowd marching across the plains, a hundred men and women led by a short liguana on horseback.
CHAPTER 100
Mason barked at the mages hidden in the brush to their left. “Blast their flanks. Make them change shape. I want them confused, hurt…I want them to have to readjust on the fly.”
Then he stared at the students who had climbed out onto the roof of the academy. They were hidden amongst the turrets, little specks with crossbows pointed outwards.
“I don’t trust your aim, so fire as far back into them as you can. When they reach the yard, don’t try and pick out individuals when we’re fighting hand to hand. I don’t want to get an arrow in my arse.”
Witas was standing beside Jakub. “You ready?”
Jakub could have lied. He could have puffed out his chest and said something a little worthier of a fighter, but what was the use?
“No.”
“Me neither, and I’m only watching. Not much use with this,” he said, gesturing at where his arm had been.
“I’m sorry about everything,” said Jakub.
“Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my reanimated who-”
“A man makes his own choices, and he has to stand by them. Every time you blame someone else for your life, you empty yourself a little. A man who carries the blame inside him might hurt, but at least he’s got character.”
With that, Jakub thought back to his inquiry, back to hoping Kortho would turn up and help him, back to blaming Irvine, Henwright and Lolo for casting him out.
That was wrong. He’d decided to break protocol on his first assignment. It was his decision to choose Kortho’s life over doing what the academy wanted.
“We’ll go to the Boarhead when this is all done,” said Jakub. “We can have a drink in peace, just two friends gulping beer. No sewers, no reanimated corpses, no demons, no deities.”
“You better go and make sure it does get done, then.”
Bendeldrick’s forces were closer now, near enough to the academy that their archers unleashed a volley of arrows.
Two academy mages, twins, shouted spellwords, and a shard of metal formed over them all, and the arrows dinked off.
Even seeing how that had helped, Jakub was worried. A bunch of novices and a few instructors – it wasn’t enough. They didn’t have the mana or essence to keep this up.
Mason raised his arms in the air.
“Mages, they just asked you a question. Why not answer them?”
Their answer was fire; mana-fuelled balls of it burning through the air and throttling toward Bendeldrick. Twin balls whizzed over his head and then curved downwards, smashing into his men.
Bendeldrick shouted something to his people, and then they charged.
CHAPTER 101
Jakub had been in fights before, but nothing on this scale. He couldn’t have imagined the way it would feel; there was so much adrenaline in him that it mixed with his dread and created a toxic mix in his stomach.
His first steps toward th
e enemy were slow ones, like he had lead weights in his boots. He watched Mason D’Angelt charging forward, he saw quartermaster Tomkins sprinting ahead with an axe, and he thought that if they could do it, then so could he.
His menagerie of reanimated familiars matched every step he took. He wanted to send them forward, but he needed to choose the right time; it’d be useless to send them into the middle of the force just to get slaughtered.
Fireballs streamed from one side to the other as academy students used their true glyphlines, and Bendeldrick’s men answered with their stolen ones.
Jakub felt the heat of them, he heard them crash into the grounds and scorch the grass.
Students cried out. One boy fell to the ground, his face aflame, and screamed even as a healing mage cast yellow light over him.
Ahead, metal clanged on metal as men clashed swords just beyond the academy building. Mason swung his sword like a club, smashing steel aside, cutting through leather and reaching flesh, bone.
Jakub tried to look for Abbie; even in the mayhem, he didn’t want to lose sight of her, didn’t want to lose her again.
One resurrection was all you got, and even now, she’d thrown herself into it.
He saw her leading the line with Mason. Her demon was beside her, a bear-sized, yellow beast with horns across his chest.
Mason summoned his own, and Jakub watched Garry, the mish-mash of flesh that barely had a recognizable form, and Krenick, the demon with floppy horns, trundle over to the invaders.
If Abbie was at the front, then that’s where he needed to be.
But he needed to use his new familiars.
To the side of Bendeldrick’s main force, six men had gathered. Spells flew from them, powered by their stolen glyphlines, and a black mist seeped out.
It slunk through the air swiftly, snaking left and right before hitting the students. The mist latched onto any skin that it touched. It covered eyes, smothered mouths, clogged noses, quickly drying like tar.
The afflicted students, blinded, dropped their weapons and stumbled and then tripped over the wounded and dead people around.
The carnage rose to an unbelievable volume, until it seemed like one roar overtook the whole grounds; it was a chorus of pain, anger, fear, and the noise itself seemed as dangerous as the black mist, because it made the younger students lose heart.
Healers worked themselves to exhaustion, screaming spellwords and pumping out yellow light, some of it falling uselessly on the already dead, but other wisps of it closing wounds, filling students with new hope.
Jakub eyed the six of Bendeldrick’s men who were readying another dose of their black mist.
Kill them, he told his animals.
It didn’t sound like the most experienced of orders. Kill them? That wasn’t what a veteran fighter would say.
It didn’t matter. Wargs and hounds tore away from him and toward the men with their glyphlines. Falcons flapped their wings and soared across the sky.
Without his reanimated animals, there was only one thing left for Jakub to do.
It terrified him. His body was almost urging him not to, but he fought through it, and he drew his sword and charged forward.
He caught up to Mason just in time to see a man approaching from behind the warlock, sword raised and ready to strike.
Jakub ran his own blade through his back, feeling it crack his spine.
The man gasped and fell forward, and Jakub’s sword was wrenched from his grip. He tried to pull it free but it was stuck, nestled in the man’s insides.
Mason turned to Jakub. He raised his sword and swung at him.
Jakub froze. He ducked down on instinct, unable to believe it. Mason was with the enemy; he was trying to kill Jakub.
He’s a traitor!
But no; Jakub heard a scream, and he turned to see a woman behind him, one of Bendeldrick’s, blood pouring from her throat.
Mason pulled Jakub’s sword from the man, passed it him, and then offered his hand.
“We’re thinning them out,” he said, his eyes wild, animalistic, blood covering his leathers.
As balls of mana smashed into the enemy, as crossbow bolts struck home, as Jakub’s familiars tore the six mist casters apart, he could see that Mason was right.
They were falling. Some were even edging back, weighing up their options.
It was then that Bendeldrick, smaller than the rest of his men and hidden in the crowd, shouted an order.
Jakub couldn’t hear what he said, but he heard what was spoken next; spellwords. Ten of them shouted in unison.
Steel panels appeared out of thin air, first above Bendeldrick and his men, and then curving, fusing together, spreading until they formed a protective dome.
Mana balls smashed against the steel but then died away. Bolts bounced uselessly off the metal and dropped to the ground.
The academy force stopped. Even Mason seemed unsure now; Bendeldrick’s glyphline soldiers had cast this defence; a dome of impenetrable steel.
CHAPTER 102
Some of the students dropped to the ground, exhausted and hurt. Others chattered, while some looked around wildly, their eyes full of the terror battle had brought on them.
They are just students. Not fighters. This shouldn’t have happened.
There was an eerie silence over the battlefield now. Bendeldrick and his surviving force were in their steel dome, and there was no telling what they were doing in there.
“They’re regrouping,” said Mason. “Healing, maybe even regenerating mana.”
“So, we just wait it out,” said Tomkins. He was carrying his axe in his left hand now, since he had a giant cut across his right arm. “They can’t stay in there forever; the dome will cost mana, won’t it?”
“He must be desperate,” said Mason.
Jakub wasn’t so sure. “No, it’s something else. He wouldn’t just give up. If I had to guess, he’d rather die than just stay in there and wait for their mana to deplete. He won’t risk getting caught.”
Abbie joined them now, panting, blood smeared around her neck. “Or he’s waiting it out because he knows that others are coming.”
This idea sent a tremor of anxiety through the students near enough - and undazed enough - to hear it.
In the silence, Jakub was able to properly look around him and it felt like a knife was twisting in his gut when he looked at the dead people littered on the academy grounds. Most were Bendeldrick’s men, but some wore academy overcoats.
There isn’t enough essence in the whole of the queendom to bring everyone back, he thought.
“If he has reinforcements coming, then we’re fucked,” said Mason. “Notice that our mages stopped casting? They’re out of mana.”
“Fuck this,” said Tomkins.
He sprinted over to the dome, ace raised. When he reached it, he shouted and then smashed his axe on the metal.
The steel rang, and Tomkins dropped his axe and fell back on the ground, clutching his hand.
It had done nothing.
“Mason?” said Abbie. “What do we do?”
“I…”
“Come on; Irvine left you in charge out here.”
Mason couldn’t take his eyes off the dome. He didn’t say anything.
Jakub thought he understood. The idea of a fearless warrior, of men who could fight and kill and face death and feel nothing – that didn’t exist.
Caught in an impossible situation, Mason was just like the rest of them; human.
“Mason,” said Abbie. “Do we stay, or…”
She was interrupted by a sound. It came from the dome; the metal muted it a little, but Jakub could hear something rumbling. It grew louder, so much that soon, Jakub felt the ground beneath his feet tremor.
He watched and expected something to burst out of the ground, but nothing happened.
Seconds passed without movement, yet the rumbling grew louder.
“We either stay,” said Mason, “and try like hell to break into that thing, or
we go back to Irvine. They’re in the basement. Maybe if we all go there…”
Then it hit Jakub.
He knew what their enemy were doing in the dome now.
“He’s given up,” he said. “Bendeldrick isn’t just waiting it out; there are tunnels under the academy grounds. Remember what Tomkins said? Some lead to the basement, but others lead away from the academy boundaries.”
“The bastard is trying to escape? How? Does he have bunch of shovels we don’t know about?”
“No, but he has men with glyphlines. They must be using magic to tunnel out.”
“A man like that,” said mason, “Once he goes to ground, he’s gone. We won’t see him for months, years, until he finds a new way to fuck everything up.”
“Do we have anything that can smash through steel?”
“Not unless you can pull something out of your arse.”
Jakub tried to think of something, anything that could get them through. Even if their mages weren’t out of mana, the academy didn’t teach spells destructive enough to cut through a dome of metal.
There was nothing.
“He’s going to get away. The bastard is running, and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Where do the tunnels come out?” said Mason.
Jakub tried to remember what he’d been taught years ago; whenever a student joined the academy, they were given a history of it. He knew the tunnels had been built underneath as a failsafe; as a way for the students to escape if the worst happened.
But then…they’d already discounted that as a means of escape. Irvine had told them that the tunnels were sealed decades ago on the order of the royals.
Did Bendeldrick know something they didn’t?
“If there’s a way out under there,” he said, “a way that even Irvine didn’t know about, then there’s no telling where it leads.”
It was in the silence, as they all thought about this, that they heard something.
The sound of hooves came from behind them.
CHAPTER 103
Jakub turned to see five men on horseback. They didn’t wear the emblems of the guardship, nor were they wearing royal uniforms.
