The Sumaran nomads traded for the raw wool and made extravagant carpets of unparalleled quality, which they would then return with the next year and sell at the markets of Langdon’s Crossing. From there, the carpets and tapestries found their way into the homes of nearly every wealthy merchant and nobleman in Valeria.
This made Langdon’s Crossing a rather wealthy town for its size. The hotter weather made for thick morning fog as a cold front blew in over the river that emptied into the sea. This allowed for General Baneford and his brood to ride within a quarter mile of the gates unseen. Every bridle, weapon, and other metallic object whose rattle and clank would give them away had been muffled with strips of cloth. As the dark outline of Langdon’s Crossing’s sandstone walls became visible, General Baneford signaled his man to sound the charge.
A brief clarion shattered the early morning silence. The minimal guard force manning the walls and gates hesitated, their confusion creating indecision until the thundering of hooves brought home the reality of what was happening. Watch sergeants sounded orders to secure the gates and called for the rousing of the city’s guards. Unfortunately for the guards of Langdon’s Crossings, a score of men under the attacking general’s command had infiltrated the town days before and moved swiftly and without doubt.
Light but voluminous cloaks commonly worn in the region concealed the armor and short bows of the general’s men. Arrows from the disguised attackers cut short many of the orders the watch commanders barked. The infiltrators rushed the northern gate through which General Baneford and his men hoped to charge virtually unopposed.
The success of the daring raid hinged on the loyal men inside the town to keep those gates open. Otherwise, even the small militia that endeavored to defend the town would crush the raiders against its sandstone walls.
The men inside rushed the gates with swords drawn and hacked at the soldiers trying to secure them. The sharp ringing of steel against steel mixed with the duller thumps of swords cutting and piercing the leather and chain brigandines of the defenders. Shrill cries of men rent the air as their lifeblood flowed from mortal wounds. Two of the infiltrators went down under crossbow fire, and a third was run through by a guard’s spear, but the rest were able to take control of the gates and force them wide.
Seeing that the only apparent source of the attack came from the north, hastily armored guards flowed from bunkhouses, and all but a handful of spotters deserted their posts to reinforce the northern section of Langdon’s Crossing.
The knot of surprised and disorganized soldiers and militia reached the gates just in time to run head-on into the charging cavalry of Baneford’s Brood. The defenders put up a determined but futile defense as the mounted attackers cut through their ranks with brutal efficiency.
Within thirty minutes, all but a few sporadic and pitifully short battles drew to an end. Langdon’s Crossing was now in the hands of Baneford’s Brood to pillage at their leisure. Men began kicking in doors of shops and homes and carried out armfuls of valuables amidst the fearful and angry screams of the owners.
“Get a detail to secure those horses!” the General commanded, pointing toward a corral holding at least two dozen of the valuable animals. “Procure some wagons and hook some horses up to draw them.”
General Baneford turned toward the sound of a woman’s scream to his left. He saw a young woman with a torn blouse try to run from a nearby house only to be grabbed and dragged back through the doorway by a pair of his men. The General swung off his horse and stalked toward the home and the continued sound of screaming with a white knuckled grip on his longsword.
The burly commander stepped through the open door to find one of his men tearing the clothes off the woman he had thrown onto a bed in the far corner of the small home. The other man stood leering, apparently waiting his turn.
A young man, probably the woman’s husband, lay dead on the floor with an obvious stab wound he had received trying to defend his wife. General Baneford snatched the surprised voyeur by the back of his armor, easily parried the soldier’s reactionary sword swing, and threw him bodily out of the door. The other soldier, too engrossed in his activities to notice his accomplice’s plight, fell heavily across the nearly naked woman when the General struck the flat of his blade upside the man’s head. The woman shoved herself fearfully into a corner of the room as General Baneford dragged the unconscious soldier out of the house by his right ankle.
“Officers, to me!” the General bellowed, his order relayed by a bugle call.
Within moments, one captain and four lieutenants stood before the outraged general who still held the unfortunate soldier halfway off the ground by his ankle.
“Who does this man belong to?”
“He is mine, sir,” one nervous lieutenant admitted.
“Secure your man. I will make an example of him and his cohort tonight. The rest of you, watch over your men. As I said before, this is a pillage operation. We are to take what we need and move out with as little bloodshed and mayhem as possible. We will act like soldiers, not savages! Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir!” the unanimous response came.
“Then get out there and control your troops, and bring any who violate my orders to me tonight.”
The officers ran to follow the orders of their commander. Two hours later, six wagons loaded with valuables, food, iron, steel, and horse feed rolled out of the pillaged town of Langdon’s Crossing with nearly two score of horses in tow.
That night, as the unit camped upon the plains, four men were brought before the General; one for murder and one for rape along with the attempted rapist and an accomplice.
General Baneford faced the four men who stood before the entire assembled company. “This unit will operate with the same laws, order, and discipline as it always has. The only thing that has changed is our mission and the needless upper chain of command. These men sought to disobey my orders and conduct themselves however they pleased and acted in direct violation to the company’s rules of conduct and discipline.”
The General’s eyes washed over every man standing before him, encompassing them all but seeming to pick out and stab each man individually. “For accessory to rape, ten lashes!”
The voyeur was immediately taken to the side and lashed to a pole that had been planted in the ground.
“For attempted rape, fifteen lashes!” The man the General had knocked out was strapped to a second pole.
“For murder,” the General continued. “Twenty lashes!”
“General, sir, it was a battle!” the soldier protested as he resisted the men dragging him to a third post.
General Baneford spun and faced the man. “The man was unarmed and not resisting! You killed him for the simple pleasure of killing, and that will not be tolerated! Twenty-five lashes!”
The last man was sweating profusely as he saw that no more whipping posts had been erected. “General, please have mercy.” Tears streamed down his face when he deduced what his sentence was to be. “I won’t never do wrong again, I swear it! I’ll be your most loyal man!”
General Baneford stepped closer to the sobbing soldier. “Would you give your life for me?”
“Aye, sir, in a moment and without hesitation.”
“Good, that should ease your fears greatly.” The General turned to face the assembled company. “For the crime of rape, hanging!”
The man screamed, cried, and lost control of his bladder as his hands were bound behind his back, and he was forced to sit on the back of a horse. The company parted down the middle as the horse and doomed man were led to a scrubby tree that had managed to take root in the unforgiving soil.
An officer dropped a loop of rope over the man’s head and around his neck. At a nod from the General, the officer slapped the horse on the rump causing it to bolt forward. The rope and noose went taut and pulled the man off the horse where he swung, kicking his legs for nearly half a minute before going slack.
Cries followed the cracks
of whips as the other three men received their punishments. The General had required the lieutenants to whom the law breaking soldiers belonged to carry out their sentences themselves. When they had finished their duty, they joined General Baneford in his command tent. Once his officers were assembled, he addressed them privately.
“I made you administer the whippings so that you will know what it is like to punish a man. I hope that lesson taught you that I do not order such punishment lightly. It is distasteful, but it is sometimes necessary to maintain good order and discipline. In the future, the officers who are in charge of any man who commits such heinous crimes as those seen today will receive five lashes themselves. I hope that will motivate you to watch your men very closely and help them maintain their discipline. Any concealment of a crime to save your own skins will result in far more severe punishment. Do you all understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” they all responded.
“Good, you should all be proud of yourselves. You and your men, with a few exceptions, did an outstanding job. We did better than I had even hoped and with far fewer losses than I dared dream. Have we gotten a breakdown of everything we procured today?”
One of the lieutenants took a step forward and handed over the report. “Yes, sir. The quartermaster has made a list of everything we carted out of Langdon’s Crossing.”
General Baneford read the report with growing pleasure then laid out his next plan.
***
Ellyssa crept between the dark, narrow corridors amidst the buildings. The sun was just setting, and the shadows were thick and deep. Her stomach tingled from her nervousness, but she would never admit she was scared.
The young apprentice tried to remember everything Azerick had taught her. The things he stressed might save her life in exactly the kind of situation in which she now found herself.
The slap of a footfall on cobblestone and a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She spun to face it but saw nothing except more dark shadows. She took several tentative steps forward and jumped back when a dark figure sprang from the shadows and lunged.
Ellyssa reached for the Source and spoke words of magic while drawing a simple glyph in the air with her free hand. The magic heeded her summons, and a hot jet of flame fanned out from her hands, striking the man-shaped silhouette in the chest and setting it aflame. The man rolled onto the ground and managed to smother the fire but did not get up.
Ellyssa’s hands shook at what she had just done and knew it was not yet over. She stepped over the body writhing on the ground and crept closer to her goal. A slight rattle and scraping of wood on wood was the only warning she got before an arrow went streaking past, just narrowly missing her heart.
Had the shield she cast on herself earlier not deflected the shaft, it would have been a killing shot. Grabbing at the Source once more, she cast another spell and five identical images of herself sprang up around her, each appearing as real as the original.
A second arrow ripped through one of her images causing it to dissipate back into the air from which it sprung. Ellyssa charged forward until she could see her attacker. As a third arrow split the air beside her, shredding a second image, she shaped the arcane power and dropped the archer with a pair of brilliant, magical bolts.
She could see her goal just ahead, but a third attacker leapt out of the shadows in front of her. Before she could react, a swarm of magical strikes sprang from the attacker’s hand. Another wizard—and she was too fatigued to cast any more spells! Two of the bolts tore her illusory duplicates to shreds, but one found the real her, striking her in the chest and almost knocking the air from her lungs.
Ignoring the pain, the young wizard sprinted toward her arcane opponent screaming a battle cry and hurling dart after dart as fast as she could pull them from the quiver at her hip.
The caster went down with three, steel-tipped darts lodged in his chest. A fourth attacker tried to lunge at her as she sprinted between the buildings, but a sharp jab with the end of her staff into his solar plexus sent him to his knees and gasping for air. Ellyssa raced past her fallen opponents without slowing, grabbed the stick planted in the ground, and waved the flag fluttering on the end of it triumphantly.
“I got it! Wahoo!” Ellyssa cheered.
Azerick, Wolf, and Grick jogged up to where she celebrated, carrying the straw-stuffed dummies they had held for the practice session.
“Outstanding, little one,” Azerick said and gave her a hug.
“I almost got you with that first arrow,” Wolf said.
“I’m glad you didn’t. The last time you hit me with one of those padded tips I had a bruise for over a week.”
“Little wizard almost set Grick on fire with dummy,” Grick complained but still smiled.
“Where’s Peck?” Ellyssa asked as she looked around.
“Over here,” a voice answered weakly as Peck walked toward the group in hunch and holding his stomach.
“Sorry about that, Peck, I just kind of reacted.”
“No worries,” Peck wheezed. “Working around horses, I’ve taken a shot or two.”
“Congratulations again, Ellyssa, I am very proud of you. You handled that like a real mage, and your quick thinking with those darts was very well done. Keep in mind, however, that many wizards may have a spell up to protect themselves from missiles, so have a backup plan in place.”
“I know, Azerick. If that had happened, I would have kept chucking darts in hopes of distracting you until I could whack you with my staff like you were a rat,” Ellyssa snarled up at him in mock fierceness.
It had been a month since the end of Ellyssa’s restriction, but she still went rat hunting with Grick and Peck so she could practice her dart throwing. She tried to convince Azerick that she still hated it whenever he told her he would have to think up a new punishment for her next time she got into trouble.
“I knew you would pass this test, so I had Agnes cook up some raspberry tarts to celebrate. Do you want to eat with us, Wolf, or should I have Agnes set some on the windowsill so you can steal them?” Azerick asked as they walked back to the keep.
“I don’t steal!”
“Then what do you call it when you snatch one of Agnes’s pies or mutton chops?”
“Urban poaching!” Wolf held his stomach and laughed.
All the occupants of the keep, which consisted of Azerick, Peck, Agnes, and Grick along with Wolf and Ghost, sat at the dining table eating raspberry tarts. Azerick even let the kids have a small glass of new wine since it was low in alcohol and they liked the way it fizzed.
Ellyssa was turning out to be a faster study than even Azerick had been before he hit the limit of his wizardly spellcasting ability. He was worried that by this time next year he would likely be slowing her down if he remained her primary magic instructor.
Azerick was confident that he could get her past his own limited knowledge of wizard spellcasting, but not by much. After that, she would need a real wizard to make the best use of her training. He decided to put the problem off for now, but he knew he could not delay the inevitable much longer.
Early the next morning, Azerick was pleased to see that Zeb and Toron had come to visit again. Ellyssa and Peck were off with Ewen practicing their weapons skills. Zeb and Simon were speaking animatedly, which meant that the conversation must involve money, accounting, or business since that was the only time Simon was animated.
“Zeb, Toron, good to see you. What brings you by today?” Azerick asked cheerily as he came down the stairs.
“We got our boats, lad!” Zeb shouted. “And at a darn good price, thanks to Simon. This is one shrewd man you have here. Never in my life have I seen someone chew down a price like him.”
“It was, ah, just good negotiating, ah, Master Azerick,” Simon mumbled.
“Good negotiating my left foot! We were bidding on this nice four-masted cargo ship. A real beauty just built three years ago, but the owner was forced to let her go to the creditor
s. Simon recognized this other scoundrel as a man the creditors pay to force up the bidding, so Simon tells Toron to go stand real close to him and just scowl, and you know nobody scowls better than Toron.” Zeb laughed loudly.
“Well this shuts the scoundrel up real fast, and we get the boat for half of what she’s worth! The next ship is a real pretty three-masted schooner, and when another bidder looked eager to fight a bidding war with us, Simon tells Toron to go growl at him! I asked Simon if the man was another plant and he says: ‘no but it worked well last time’, and darned if the man didn’t make another bid and we got her for a song!”
“That is wonderful news, Zeb. Good work, Simon and Toron,” Azerick said.
“That’s not all, Az. After the auction, we go and look at another decent four-masted hauler. She’s a little older but in good condition and really put together well. She kind of reminded me of my wife!” Zeb cried and got everyone laughing.
“We go below decks to check out her hold, and when the captain ain’t lookin’, Simon pulls a bit of sawdust out of his pocket, sprinkles it along the seam of the hold, and says he fears there may be termites and gets a thousand gold crowns knocked right off the top!”
“Simon, I have to admit I am surprised at you.”
Simon misconstrued Azerick’s remark as criticism and tried to defend himself. “Well, ah, oh, I felt that the ship was overpriced and the captain, ah, was too stiff on his, ah, negotiations, Master Azerick.”
“Well, it sounds like you certainly loosened him up. So you bought four ships altogether?”
Zeb shook his head. “No, and you can blame me if you disagree, but I had one ship commissioned to be built, and she didn’t come cheap, even though Simon still wheedled down the price far better than I could have.”
The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4 Page 80
