Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  Koren stopped, standing stock still. Bjorn grasped his shoulder and looked in the boy’s eyes with dread resignation. “Another bad feeling?”

  “No,” Koren shook his head. “I hear something.”

  “Shh,” Raddick ordered with a hand in the air, and the party halted. “What?”

  “I don’t know. Voices? The wind is blowing in the direction, so it carries the sound away,” Koren explained.

  “When you-” Raddick was interrupted by another howl from the orcs behind them. “We will go the edge of the clearing, then you listen again.”

  In front of them was no mere clearing where a few trees had fallen, it was a flat meadow between two arms of the mountain, more than half a mile across to the trees on the other side. Above those trees, the mountainside rose steeply to a rocky cliff, exposed to the winds. The ground in front of them was grasses and low shrubs, cut down the middle by a stream which formed a marsh. “Koren?” Raddick asked anxiously. If they were to cross the exposed ground, they could not hesitate long. Seeing the grasses waving in the wind, Raddick’s experienced eyes imagined the best path across the open ground and did not like what he saw. The streambed was not deep enough for concealment, and slogging through the sticky mud and hummocks of the marsh would be slow going.

  Koren held up a finger for silence, listening intently. The afternoon winds gusting across the mountain whistled in his ears, he tilted his head and cupped a hand to one ear to shelter that ear from the wind’s roar. “It is voices,” he announced uncertainly. “People talking, a lot of them.”

  “People?” Raddick asked, frustrated at the vague answer. “People like us, like dwarves, or like orcs?”

  Koren closed his eyes. “Not orcs,” he shook his head without opening his eyes. “Dwarves, maybe?” He was guessing. If not orcs, who else but dwarves could be in their mountains?

  Thomas smacked a fist into his palm. “Dwarves would be welcome! If we have found one of their army patrols,”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Raddick ordered, speaking more to himself than to Thomas. “You are sure?” He glared intently at Koren, not liking that he was entrusting decisions to a boy, a wizard who had no knowledge of wizardry.

  Koren paused to listen again. “I am sure what I hear are not orcs.”

  “Do you have a feeling about it?” Bjorn asked.

  “No. I, yes. I think this is the way we are supposed to go.”

  “The way we are supposed to go, or just you?” Raddick demanded, aware time was slipping away.

  “I don’t know!” Koren looked away, nearly in tears. “I’m telling you all I know.”

  They could argue all day and Raddick would have no better clue which way to go. Behind them and likely to the left were orcs. To the right, the meadow ended abruptly at what Raddick guessed was a cliff of unknown height. Spray thrown up by the stream tumbling down a waterfall told him that direction was not promising for an escape. “Right, then, we go forward. Quickly, no stopping until we reach the other side.” His own water flask was half empty and though he did not know when next they would find fresh water, they could not stop at the stream, not even for a moment.

  The party broke into a run, loping over the uneven grass with Bjorn struggling to keep up in the rear. “It is dwarves!” Koren said excitedly after a momentary stop. “A lot of them, and they’re shouting something I can’t understand.”

  “Go,” Raddick slapped Koren on the back as he went past. “You can listen when we get to the trees.”

  They reached the edge of the marsh, trying to step across on hummocks, but the grassy mounds collapsed under their boots and the soldiers slipped off into the mud. Koren was following Lem, trying to keep away from the deepest parts of the mud, when something across the meadow caught his eye. “Look!”

  It was a dwarf soldier, then two more. They stepped out from the trees, swords in one hand, shading their eyes from the sun with the other. At first, the dwarves held their swords out menacingly to Raddick’s group, then turned to shout to someone behind them. Koren thought he saw the shoulders of the dwarves slump, then he realized with a shock why. “They’re the same soldiers,” he groaned.

  “What soldiers?” Bjorn asked, peering at the three dwarves.

  “The same ones we left behind,” Koren explained as more armed dwarves stepped out from the trees. “Lieutenant Renhelm’s group!”

  “What!” Thomas exploded. “We have walked in a circle all morning?”

  “No,” Raddick said, spitting on the ground in disgust. “Not in a circle, but our paths have crossed again. And this time,” he looked behind them with guilt, “we have lead the orcs right to them. Move! We must warn them.”

  Splashing through the marsh, Raddick and his people waved their arms to the dwarves, urging them back into the trees, but the dwarves were doing the same, animatedly waving Raddick to turn around. “Captain!” Koren caught snatches of what the dwarves were trying to say. “They want us to go back.”

  “I got that,” Raddick nodded curtly. “They don’t know about the orcs tracking us,” which made him wonder; what danger was behind Renhelm’s party?

  When the Royal Army soldiers forded the stream and up out of the marsh on the other side, the dwarves gave up trying to warn them away, and one of them sheathed his sword and trotted out to meet them. “Captain Raddick, you must go back,” the dwarf gasped breathlessly. “There is a band of orcs behind us, I fear our rear guard is already engaged.”

  Raddick groaned. “We have orcs behind us also, a substantial force.”

  The dwarf’s knees almost buckled. “You must speak with Renhelm.”

  Renhelm was nearly at the edge of the woods when Raddick reached the treeline. “What are you-” the dwarf leader fumed, then stopped short of whatever he intended to say.

  “We lead a hunting party of orcs on a merry chase after we left you, but then,” Raddick judged the position of the sun, “two hours ago, we saw a larger group on a ridge above us. They must have already been on the mountain last night. We’ve been running from them, and now I’ve lead them right to you.”

  “You didn’t know,” Renhelm clapped a hand on Raddick’s shoulder. “We have been tracked since mid-morning by what I estimate are twenty or more orcs. My rearguard is keeping them occupied, but we are running out of arrows, and they are too many,” he sighed heavily. “Caught between hammer and anvil, we are. We’ll have to make a stand here as best we can, the civilians can’t move any faster and my people are exhausted. Captain, we made a bargain and you did your best to keep it, now I offer the same to you. Take your people north through the trees, there is a steep cliff you will have trouble with, but the orcs will be busy with us for a long while, and perhaps they won’t notice where you have gone.”

  “No!” Koren spoke before Raddick. “We can’t run away.”

  “You will go where I tell you,” Raddick said coldly.

  “I won’t go,” Koren crossed his arms defiantly. “It’s not right.”

  “Koren,” Bjorn stepped in between the army captain and the boy wizard, “none of us like to run away, not leaving defenseless people like this,” he looked to the terrified refugees who were now streaming through the forest toward them. “Sometimes we have to-”

  “Bjorn,” Koren gritted his teeth. “It’s not right. I feel it’s not right. This is where I’m supposed to be, not running away.”

  “You feel it?” Raddick asked sharply.

  “Yes! I feel it, like the way I know where to aim or when to release a bowstring.”

  Raddick and Bjorn looked at each other, torn. Raddick knew his orders, and allowing Koren to be trapped between two bands of orcs was not in keeping with those orders. “Koren did have a feeling earlier,” Bjorn reminded, “before we saw that second group of orcs. He knew we shouldn’t go that way.”

  “To remain here is madness,” Raddick protested.

  “And to flee, to hope the orcs forget about us, and to climb a cliff, likely in the darkness?” Bjorn
asked. “The boy may be right. All our choices are bad ones, maybe making a stand here is the least bad. Go where you will, I will stay here with Koren. I, for one, have learned not to question the spirits, no matter how muddled their speech.”

  “Spirits?” Renhelm asked, confused.

  “I will explain later,” Raddick said, then stepped forward to whisper in Koren’s ear. “You know I must not allow you to be captured.”

  “I know,” Koren felt a lump in his throat. “The orcs may see to that.”

  The rearguard of the dwarves was rapidly losing ground as the superior numbers of the orcs began to outflank them, then the retreat came a disorganized rout as the dwarf archers shot their last arrows. Unable to do anything else useful, they ran, dodging arrows from the orcs, and moved along civilian stragglers as best they could, even picking up small children whose parents were exhausted and unable to continue carrying their burden.

  As the refugees and Renhelm’s soldiers ran on stumbling feet toward the meadow, three of Raddick’s archers ran the other way, to engage the orcs. Faced with a new, fresh enemy whose arrows made the orcs pay for a lack of caution, the orcs halted their advance to consolidate their strung-out lines, and soon began to pour concentrated volleys of arrows back to the Royal Army soldiers. Thomas took an arrow to his belly that only dented his fine chainmail, but knocked the breath from his lungs and made him fall. Seeing that, the other two soldiers provided cover while Thomas limped backwards, unable to draw a bowstring. The orcs were still wary of their new enemy, and hung back so Thomas was able to reach the meadow with the help of his companions.

  “I should have gone with them!” Koren protested.

  “You are not going out of my sight,” Raddick made a cutting motion with one hand, indicating the discussion was over. “Save your arrows,” he ordered as the three soldiers he had sent into the forest emerged in retreat.

  “Save them?” Koren could already see orcs rampaging through the woods, coming straight at him. “For what?”

  “For a chance to do something other than a futile gesture,” Raddick responded angrily. “If we are fated to die here today, the few arrows you carry will be of little use to us, unless we see an opportunity for them to make a great difference.”

  As the last civilian refugees straggled out of the forest, an orc army stepped out of the treeline on the other side of the meadow and advanced in well-disciplined rows, spreading out to prevent the dwarves from escaping north or south. Renhelm and Raddick got their soldiers into ranks but they were too few, and were trapped between an army of two hundred orcs advancing across the meadow, and a party of orc hunters coming up through the forest behind.

  “Go back?” Raddick asked, not taking his eyes off the solid row of orcs that were splashing their way across the marsh and through the stream.

  “No,” Renhelm answered. “There’re almost a sheer drop-off in that direction. Getting the civilians up there is when that orc hunting party caught us. If we run now, the orcs would catch us as we climbed down.”

  “We make a stand here, then,” Raddick declared with a questioning look to Koren, who shook his head. If the boy had a feeling that this is where he was supposed to be, the spirits must want the young wizard dead.

  Koren shuddered as the orc army halted fifty yards from him, shouted a terrible war cry as one, and thumped the flat of their battleaxes on their chests. The front rank of the orcs parted as a single orc, somewhat taller than typical for their kind and wearing a helmet with twisted horns sticking out to each side, stepped forward.

  Koren felt cold all over. The orc with the grotesque helmet had its right hand stretched out, palm upward, and above that palm danced a ball of magical flame. He faced an orc wizard of unknown power! The wizard was looking toward Renhelm and Raddick rather than Koren, with the dwarf soldier shaking his axe and shouting something Koren’s spinning mind did not hear. As the orc’s lips twisted in a hideous smile and before Raddick could stop him, Koren’s right hand whipped back to snatch an arrow, fit it to the bowstring, draw and fire. A second arrow was on its way as the first reached out for the orc wizard, and a third would have joined its fellows if Raddick had not grabbed Koren’s shoulder and pulled him roughly aside.

  Even with Koren using magical force to bend the heavy bow, the arrows had to follow a graceful arc rather than flying in a deadly straight line to cross the distance. A graceful arc and a time-consuming one that doomed the arrows, as a frantic shout of alarm sprung up along the orc front line. Before the wizard could take notice of his peril, the first arrow was diving to kill its prey. A desperate flick of the wizard’s wrist as the creature threw himself to the side caused the arrow to miss, embedding itself in the neck of an orc to the wizard’s left. Even having stumbled to the ground, the wizard easily deflected the second arrow’s flight, knocking it to the ground to plunge uselessly into soft mud and disappear.

  “Koren!” Raddick said angrily through gritted teeth. “You accomplished nothing but attracting that wizard’s attention to you! Get behind me, you young idiot,” he ordered as he tugged powerfully on the strap of the boy’s arrow quiver, but Koren bent his neck and the strap slipped over his head, taking his helmet with it. With the strap suddenly no longer attached to the young wizard, Raddick fell backward to sprawl on the damp grass, rolling to one side and pushing himself upright, but he was too late. Koren had stepped forward.

  The orc wizard did not know who was this remarkably skilled archer he faced, and the orc did not care other than making that archer the focus of his rage. The dwarf leader with his shouted insults was forgotten for the moment, the wizard shook off the hands of his own soldiers who helped him up from the ground, using a thrust from his palm to throw them angrily aside as they had witnessed the indignity and near-death he had suffered at the hands of an archer who appeared to be a mere boy. Summoning more power than he needed, the wizard spun a glaring fireball so large it scorched the skin of two orcs who were foolishly behind him, and with a scream of primal rage he cast the fireball across the meadow at the archer.

  Koren had time only to regret how stupid he was when the fireball filled his vision. Instinctively, he ducked to one knee, closed his eyes and threw up a palm as he braced for searing death.

  Behind Koren, Raddick had barely again stood up, his boots slipping to find purchase on the muddy grass when he saw the fireball coming at him for he was directly behind Koren. Raddick dived to one side, knowing the move was futile, so he was astonished when the glowing ball of deathfire staggered in the air and was violently shoved aside to splatter to the ground. The hellfire broke up as if it were liquid, deadly droplets splashing up as a fountain, burning and killing, scorching grasses and blasting craters in the muddy soil.

  Incredulous to be alive, Koren fell back to thump his backside on the wet grass, stunned. How could he be alive? He hadn’t done anything, not even had time to beg the spirits to aid him. A wailing to his right pulled him out of his momentary reverie and he looked to see the horror. The horror he had caused.

  Though somehow he made the fireball miss him, it had found other victims. To his right, a dozen or more civilian dwarves who had sought the safety of being near the Royal Army captain, now lay dead or dying, terribly burned by the magical fire. While Koren sat frozen in shock, a dwarf woman, herself burned beyond recognition, tried to beat out the flames enveloping the child she had been holding, her own hands mere blackened stumps. Even as Koren’s mouth struggled to speak and he scrambled to his feet, the woman collapsed on top of her child, both of them consumed by the fires of hell.

  Koren took one step toward the dead dwarves, wanting nothing more than to take back what he had done, to go back in time and let the fireball consume him rather than killing so many innocents by saving himself. The bodies were already turning to ash, becoming dwarf-shaped piles of cinder on the ground. Another step was halted before he could lift a foot, knowing there was nothing he could do to help the dead.

  He could not help those he ha
d killed.

  He could avenge them.

  Slowly, he turned to look at the enemy wizard, who was staring at Koren in amazement and fear. Who was this unknown boy archer, and how had an unstoppable ball of magical fie been knocked aside? The orc wizard struggled to quell his shaking hands, concentrating all his energy to lift one hand above his head, willing another flame to dance in his palm. This flame wavered, flickering to reflect the shaken confidence of the wizard who conjured it into existence. The wizard redoubled his efforts, reaching into the shadow world for more power but then the fire snuffed out, because the wizard’s will was replaced by stark terror at what he had seen. Across the meadow, the archer boy was staring straight at him, eyes narrowed, utterly focused on the orc magician, seeing right through him into his true essence. In that moment, the orc’s connection to the shadow realm failed as he lost his entire sense of self.

  Across the field, the archer boy’s right hand was held out in front of him, and before that hand, a blazing white-hot sun sprang to life.

  Raddick also saw to his astonishment the flame Koren had willed to appear, the light already blinding the Royal Army captain while the fire was still building in intensity. Mindfully of Shomas’ warning that Koren could not use power without killing himself, Raddick leapt forward, his arms coming down to push the boy to the ground before the he could kill himself and others around him by dangerously unskilled use of magic, but with the slightest gesture of two fingers on Koren’s left hand, the Royal Army captain was launched twenty feet backwards to crash into Thomas. It was a gesture Koren was not even aware he had made, a use of power so small and insignificant it escaped his attention. He had needed to concentrate and Raddick sought to interrupt him, so the world had bent to Koren’s unconscious will and thrown Raddick backwards with no more effort than the beating of a fly’s wings in a thunderstorm.