Shadow and Flame

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Birds,” Niklas replied. “A huge flock of them, all different kinds, attacking us like we were the first corn they’d seen after a long winter. They were fearless—and completely unnatural.” The mages listened carefully as Niklas and Ayers recounted what they had seen.

  “They were bewitched,” Kulp said. He was a portly young man with a round belly and the stocky look of a brewer. Rumor had it that when he was not working magic, he made ale and mead. “I would imagine some of the frenzy you saw was the birds fighting the compulsion. That’s why the attack broke off so quickly. Even a strong mage can’t command so many beings for very long.”

  “Well, that’s something, I guess,” Niklas said. “Although they sure did enough damage in the time they had.”

  “We failed to cut off their mage completely,” Mevvin added. “So we tried to punch holes in the magic or throw so much magic against him that he had to deflect some of his power to defend himself, which weakened his hold on the birds.”

  “Meaning that without your help, the attack could have lasted longer,” Ayers summarized.

  Dagur nodded. “Possibly. But not indefinitely—and that’s the opportunity here. Every magic has limits. It might be limited by the skill or the strength of the caster, or by the ritual and objects it requires, or by the place or time, or by lots of other things. And anytime a single mage draws on his own power to use magic instead of tapping into the meridians, he—or she—runs a real danger of burning himself up, or draining himself dry.”

  “That’s why battle mages work best in teams,” Kulp said. “Some can defend while others take the offense.”

  “What kind of mage can summon birds like that?” Niklas asked.

  Dagur sighed. “It can be done in a variety of ways, depending on the type of mage,” he said. “Right now, with one encounter, we don’t know that much about this mage’s abilities. We don’t know whether he’s using an artifact with a very specific type of spell, or drawing on land and air magic, or something different entirely.”

  “How do we find that out?” Ayers leaned forward intently.

  “Unfortunately, we’re going to have to watch what he does next,” Dagur replied. “We might get some inkling of what is going on from the captives, but they can only tell us what they observe, which may be highly unreliable. Let’s see what else he throws at us, and that should give us a good idea.”

  “You weren’t out there, in the middle of those birds,” Niklas said with a glare. “We can’t just watch and wait.”

  Dagur shook his head. “You misunderstand me, sir. I didn’t mean we could do nothing. Based on what seemed to work—and not work—this time, we’re already developing counter-magics, and ways to keep our scrying from being blocked so we can react faster, maybe even before the strike actually hits the soldiers.”

  “Anything you can give us helps,” Niklas said earnestly. “I used to think birds were pretty. Now, I never want to see another one, and certainly not close up!” He paused. “Where does Nagok fit into this?”

  Dagur shrugged. “Don’t know. Right now, we’ve just got a name and wild talk from captives who never saw him. By Torven’s horns! He might just be a legend.”

  “Or he might be real—real trouble,” Ayers replied. “We’ve got to find out more about him and whether he’s their commander—or the mage behind what we saw today. Or both.”

  “What do you make of this?” Niklas handed over the skull helmet they had brought back from the battlefield. Dagur handled it gingerly, studying it from all angles before passing it to the other mages to examine.

  “The taint of magic clings to it,” Dagur said. “Does it tell you anything?”

  “I’m more concerned about how it looks than how it feels,” Kulp said thoughtfully, holding the helmet so that it faced him straight on, as if it were a severed head. “Obviously, it was meant to inspire terror, and I’m betting it worked.”

  “Let’s just say they made a dramatic entrance,” Ayers remarked drily.

  “It takes a lot of work to make a helmet like this,” Kulp continued. “Far more than just a regular ‘battle bucket.’ And you fought a large number of men who all had these helmets, right?”

  “No idea whether all the troops had them. We never got all the way to the back ranks,” Niklas observed. “But yes, the ones we fought, in at least the first third of their troops, all had helmets like that one.”

  “But they weren’t identical,” Ayers said, jumping in. “There were all kinds of creatures—large cats, wolves, dogs, birds, and all of them made strange and frightening.”

  Kulp lowered the helmet. “We need to consider the idea that the helmets may have a religious significance, or at least a superstitious one,” he said. “All kinds of legends exist about ways men can take on the characteristics of animals during a fight. For an army to go to all the expense and trouble of these kinds of helmets, and for them to not be standardized, means that these beast shapes are very important to them.”

  “Do you think they’re shape-shifters?” Ayers asked, trying to figure out where Kulp was going with his thoughts.

  Kulp shook his head. “If they had been able to shift, surely they would have during the battle. They didn’t, even when you drove them back.” He sighed. “Maybe we can get something out of the prisoners to give us a better idea,” he said. “It might just be symbolic. If we’re lucky, that’s all it is.”

  “And if we’re not lucky?” Niklas asked, feeling a prickle on the back of his neck.

  “Then we could be up against some of the nastier magics to tangle with,” Dagur replied.

  Another candlemark passed as Niklas, Ayers, and the mages discussed strategies and defense. Finally, a knock came at the tent pole. “Captain? We’ve got the prisoners ready to question, and Ordel says he can fix you both up now.”

  As the mages prepared for the first round of questioning, Niklas and Ayers trudged to the healers’ tent. The tent smelled of liniment and poultices, healing tea and potions. A score of soldiers lay on pallets, bandaged and splinted, sleeping off the effects of the draughts and magic used to heal their injuries. Niklas did not need to go behind the tent to know that out there lay more young men side by side, covered with sheets until the night watch could bury them properly, the ones whose injuries were too severe for the healers to fix.

  “Let’s have a look at you.” Ordel’s manner was curt, which Niklas knew meant the healer was drained from his work and angry over the ones he could not save. Ordel gave Niklas and Ayers a cursory look from head to toe.

  “Better than some I’ve had through here,” he grunted. “Sit down. Better put something on those scratches so they don’t go bad.” Ordel shuffled over to a table and rummaged through the bags of powders and bottles of potions, then he grabbed a mortar and pestle and began to mix together the items he had chosen. One of his assistant healers came up to ask him a question, and Ordel barked the answer, sending the young healer away in a hurry.

  The war is taking its toll, Niklas thought. Ordel had not seemed so abrupt, nor looked so haggard, before the last two battles. Then again, he gets none of the triumphs and all of the failures.

  “Birds, huh.” Ordel’s voice was nearly a growl.

  “Yeah,” Niklas said as the healer spread a poultice on his wounds and used his magic to speed the healing on the deepest of the gashes. “Could have been worse. I didn’t see any eagles.”

  “Humphf,” Ordel grunted. “Wonder why not?”

  “Actually I was rather glad—” Niklas cut off midsentence, and frowned. “You know, that’s a good question. Why weren’t there eagles? And owls and seagulls—”

  “Don’t tempt fate,” Ayers replied. “It was bad enough without them.”

  Niklas shook his head. “You don’t understand. There’s something to this. If Nagok, or whoever the mage was who called the birds, meant to do damage, why not bring in the biggest predators? Why even have the sparrows and warblers? Why not make it all hawks and falcons and why not brin
g in the big birds, like the eagles?”

  “None of those around here,” Ordel replied without looking up, although the question was not specifically addressed to him. “Have to go up into the mountains to find eagles. And any fool knows that hawks and such are territorial. Might only be a couple of them for a few miles around.”

  Niklas looked up and grinned. “That’s it. Maybe this mage has limits,” he said, feeling excitement despite his weariness. “I mean, why stop at birds? Why not call in foxes and wolves and feral dogs and bears, while he’s at it?” He leaned forward like he was about to impart a secret. “Maybe he didn’t because he can’t,” he said, eyes alight with the idea. “Maybe he’s got to deal with what’s nearby—and that’s why he didn’t bring in eagles and more hawks. Maybe his magic only reaches so far.”

  Ayers nodded. Ordel kept going about his business, treating their wounds and binding up the deep cuts. “All right,” he said, willing to spin Niklas’s theory out and see where it led. “Wouldn’t be the first time we ran into magic that couldn’t be everywhere. The closest we’ve ever seen to that was the Meroven mages who sent the Great Fire, Torven take their souls,” he said. “And to do something on that scale, they had to work together.”

  “So maybe he’s got a limited range,” Niklas theorized. “And maybe that’s why he only called birds and not every wild animal. Seems strange, doesn’t it, if he wanted us dead that badly? Birds were bad, but bears would have been worse.”

  Ayers glared at him. “You are testing the gods,” he said grimly. “The birds were bad enough.”

  “Hear me out,” Niklas said, energized since the idea of their enemy’s limits gave him hope. “You use your strongest weapon first, right? Who wants to fight longer than he has to? So if you’ve got catapults, you don’t start with slingshots and work up. You bombard the shit out of them and try to flatten them into the sand first, and then maybe there isn’t a ‘later.’”

  “I’m tired and my head hurts,” Ayers replied grumpily. “You’ve lost me.”

  “If the mage could have sent something worse against us, he would have,” Niklas said. “So maybe he has to use what’s inside his range, and maybe he can only call one kind of thing at a time.”

  “How do you figure? There were all sorts of birds,” Ayers argued.

  Niklas made a dismissive gesture. “Yeah—but they were all birds.”

  “Maybe birds could get there faster,” Ayers said.

  “True,” Niklas conceded. “So maybe he’s got to work with what’s at hand. He can’t just ‘poof’ creatures into place from far away.”

  Ayers shrugged. “Thank Charrot for small favors.”

  “We know three things for sure,” Niklas said as Ordel walked away and put down his mortar and pestle, and came back with a bottle of elixir and a cup. He poured a bit of the greenish liquid into the cup and thrust it into Niklas’s hands.

  “Drink,” he ordered, interrupting the conversation. “Fascinating as this is, I have work to do.”

  Niklas glowered at him but obeyed, returning the cup so Ordel could refill it and pass it to Ayers. “Three things,” he continued, ignoring Ordel. “First, that he called only birds—which may mean he can only use one type of animal at a time. Second, that the birds he called likely lived nearby, inside a certain range. And third, the attack stopped suddenly.”

  Ayers drank the elixir and made a face at the taste, shoving the cup back at Ordel. “Gah, that was awful,” he said. “Trying to poison me after I survived the battle?” He returned his attention to Niklas. “So it stopped. So what?”

  Niklas shrugged. “Maybe nothing. The attack could have been timed to put us off guard and damage us and then lifted when the soldiers were in place. Or,” he suggested, “maybe their mage can’t hold control of the animals for too long. Think about it—keeping all those minds focused, overcoming all that instinct to force them to act unnaturally. It’s the same reason mages can’t just take over entire armies like puppets. It takes too much magic.”

  “Captain?” one of the guards stuck his head into the tent. “The sun set. The talishte have risen. Kulp is looking for you.”

  “Go,” Ordel said. “You’re patched up—for now. Try to stay that way. Get out of my tent.” The ghost of a smile softened his words.

  “Trying out your theories about magic on me doesn’t get you anywhere,” Ayers said as they headed toward where the mages were holding the prisoners. “I’ll grant you that it’s an interesting idea. But you’re going to have to try them out on Dagur and see what a real mage thinks.”

  “I intend to do exactly that, after we see what the prisoners have to say,” Niklas replied.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MAGES HAD THE SECOND BIGGEST TENT, after the healers. Four mages and an apprentice slept and worked in the tent, and it was crowded with bedrolls and folding worktables, two trunks, and a brazier large enough to heat a small cauldron. Dried herbs and berries hung from the tent poles, and a ring of salt in a shallow trench surrounded the entire tent. Niklas saw a bundle of feathers on one table and shied away instinctively after the onslaught they had faced.

  I don’t think I’ll be able to see a songbird for a long time without cringing, he thought.

  Two men were seated on the floor, their arms, wrists, and ankles bound securely. They looked worse for the wear, with large bruises purpling from the injuries they had taken in the fight. Niklas knew that the healers would have done as little as possible to keep them alive for questioning. No sense healing them completely if they’re just going to hang, Niklas thought, regretting the coldness of the decision even though he knew it was necessary.

  The captives’ skin was ashen, their breathing shallow. They know they’re dead men. Just waiting for the sword to fall.

  Geir was there, along with Ekkle, another of Penhallow’s talishte on loan to Niklas. Both talishte looked grim, and Niklas knew that reading prisoners was one of the tasks Geir disliked most. “Thanks for being here.”

  Geir shrugged. “It’s war. Perhaps I should worry if my dislike of this kind of thing ever lessens.”

  “Anything?” Niklas asked with a glance toward Rikard. He looked around. “I thought we had three prisoners?”

  Rikard grimaced. “We did. That’s how we found out that their mage placed a geas on the men so that if they were magicked, their hearts stop.”

  “Lovely,” Niklas muttered. “Does that apply to talishte?”

  Geir shook his head. “What we do isn’t magic in the same sense. It’s what we are. So the odds are good that I can read them.” His glance told Niklas what he did not say aloud: They’re going to die anyway.

  Niklas looked to the two battered prisoners. He guessed they felt the effect of their wounds even if Ordel had blunted their pain. A wide bandage around the abdomen trussed up a belly wound on one of the prisoners, but it was likely to sour and go bad quickly, and even the healers could not always prevent that. The other man slumped in his chair as if all the fight had gone out of him, waiting for the end.

  “We can make this easy or hard,” Niklas said. “I have no desire to further your suffering. Tell us what you know of Nagok and his mages, of your army and its defenses, and you’ll go quietly in your sleep.”

  “Never wanted to fight for that bloody freak in the first place,” the man with the belly wound muttered, his Meroven accent thick. “I was just getting my farm working again, after the Burning Times and the Downfall,” he said bitterly. “I even had a cow again. Got crops in the field. Wife’s expecting a baby. Then the skull helmets came,” he said, making the name a curse.

  “You were conscripted?” Niklas asked.

  The prisoner raised his face to meet Niklas’s gaze with a baleful expression. “Kidnapped’s the word for it. Hauled away like a criminal in front of my own wife, and her screaming and pleading. Thrown on a cart and locked in irons. What do I know of soldiering? Not much,” he said with a bitter glance at the blood seeping through his bandage. He shifte
d in his seat and grimaced.

  “Whole wagonful of us they had, and more like us,” the prisoner said. “Fighting’s been bad all year, what with the warlords fighting among themselves after the Burning destroyed everything. We could hardly get a crop planted without it being ridden over by one army or another. Then Nagok showed up.”

  “Where did he come from?” Niklas pressed. “Is that his real name? Where was he in the war?”

  The prisoner shrugged. “Who knows? I’m just a farmer. But I can tell you what I’ve heard.”

  “He’s buer, evil spirit,” the other prisoner spoke up. “Bad seed.”

  “Tell me what you know about him,” Niklas urged. “You owe him nothing. He stole your lives from you. Tell me, and we’ll get your vengeance.”

  “Nagok was a prince,” the second prisoner said, speaking the Common tongue with an equally strong Meroven accent.

  “That’s a lie,” the first man argued. “The king and the princes died in the Burning Times.”

  “Maybe not all,” the second man retorted. “How would we know?” He turned back to Niklas. “Nagok was sly. He was a bastard, so the crown wouldn’t have gone to him, except for the Downfall. They say he poisoned his rivals, rallied what remained of the army, and crushed anyone who opposed him.”

  “Did he send the marauders, the ones who came over the border in the last few months?” Niklas asked.

  “They were spies,” the first man answered. “Sent to find out how bad off Donderath was after the Burning Times. People said only our magic failed, that Donderath prospered. We heard there was food here, and that things were as they used to be, that only Meroven suffered from the Downfall.” His mouth twisted. “Those were just dreams.”

  “So the marauders were sent to size us up, steal what they could carry, and report back to Nagok?” Niklas pressed.