Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  “Its dead?” The captain was of course the first to reach him, he wasn’t without courage and he liked to lead by example. Servous, his wolf was beside him, nervously scenting the air, but not growling, and that was probably a good sign. Animals were very good about knowing when something was dangerous. Bearabus seemed calm as well, and though she was young she surely had the same instincts, even if she really just wanted to rub against him, and maybe receive a little comfort, and maybe some more food.

  “I think so.”

  Without any more being said, there wasn’t a lot they could say anyway, the two of them approached the cottage, or the corner of it that could still be seen extending out from underneath the blackened mountain of burnt kraken. Others followed them cautiously, bows at the ready, arrows already notched and it was comforting to know that if the kraken so much as wriggled there would be a hundred spelled arrows in its hide a heartbeat later. Some days, he decided, it was good to be attached to a ranger troop.

  In time they reached Ferris and the other man, still lying in the soft grass between the cottage and the town, and Marjan took a moment to examine them. He didn’t really need to, he knew they were dead, their bodies were so crushed and misshapen that they couldn’t have survived, but for some reason he had to be sure. He also perhaps had to see Ferris’ face one last time, and say a quick prayer to the lord of magic for his brother.

  The man was a hedge wizard, nowhere near powerful enough to join a guild, but for all that he was a fellow mage, and more than that, a good man, a friend and a fine companion. He had made himself at home in the town, learned to adapt to the elves’ ways quickly, and then gone on to become a fine and worthy citizen, and for him, for a man who had already been a town’s wizard, it probably wasn’t that different to his previous life. He would have been happy here, and the people would have been happy with him. They had been and in all likelihood he had already begun composing a new set of tales about life in Evensong for his family and friends. Tales that Marjan would have enjoyed hearing. He had even been learning a little more of his magic, advancing his skills as he too sought to protect the town as best he was able. And now he was dead for no good reason.

  “Happy travels and many more stories to tell, my brother.”

  As he had seen others do at funerals Marjan knelt down beside him, neatened his robe as best he could so that it once more covered the terrible wounds on his body, and then closed his eyes for him. The man was dead, far beyond caring, but he still couldn’t stand to see him staring at him like that, the pain of being slowly crushed to death still screaming out through his sightless eyes. Others shouldn’t have to see that either and he knew the man had a young daughter somewhere out there in the town. A daughter who as he understood it, was now an orphan. He wondered whom the job of telling her about her father’s death fell to, and he had a horrible feeling that with Master Silas away, it fell to him.

  Captain Saul he noticed did much the same with the other victim, going slightly further in crossing his arms over his ruined chest so that he almost looked peaceful, before whispering a few quick words and returning to him.

  “The one who brought this, he is in there?”

  Marjan just nodded, on some level knowing it was true without any evidence, and then once he’d worked up the nerve to approach the foul smelling flesh of the beast, he started the lengthy task of freeing Dimeter from his prison, cutting away at the hunks of dead kraken with a thin blade of fire he extended from his fingers, digging for the cottage’s door which he knew was somewhere inside it.

  It took time, a lot of time as even dead the kraken’s flesh resisted his fire, and cooking a kraken he discovered was much easier than burning large slices of it into ashes and scooping out the pieces.

  In time, when they realised what he was doing the whole troop became involved in the mining operation, using their horses and sets of ropes and hooks to drag away each new cube of the foul smelling flesh as he cut it free. Others joined them in time and soon he could see Harvas using his sunbeam to simply try and burn the flesh into ashes, while several of his fellow druids were using their own techniques. Despite their efforts, the beast was so massive and its flesh so resistant to everything magical even in death, it was surely the best part of two or three hours before their goal was in sight.

  By the time they’d found the front of the cottage, a building that had all but collapsed under the weight of the beast, they’d been joined, he was surprised to look around and see half a dozen elders standing behind them, watching, but he was grateful for their presence. He didn’t know what to say to the young wizard, and it wasn’t his place to judge him let alone punish him, that would fall to them and Master Silas when he returned.

  It would also fall to Dimeter himself he discovered a heartbeat later.

  As the first of the rangers, sword in hand, cautiously approached the door, a structure that was still covered in the discoloured remains of the beast though only to a depth of a thumb nail or so, there was a blast of something, something hot and furious coming from inside the structure, but which simply tore its way free. The ranger was sent flying by the shock wave, along with the door and most of the wall itself, all of which were heading directly for Marjan. He had just enough time to raise a shield of force between them before they hit and still was sent sprawling to the grass, along with the others all around him. It was a powerful blast, surprisingly so for an adept as was the power of his summoning, but it was also a mistake.

  As he struggled to his feet Marjan knew that. Dimeter should have known it too. With the door gone and most of the front wall as well, the strength of the building was compromised, and with the enormous weight of the great beast on top of it, the result was inevitable. There was a sudden groan as the remaining beams had to bear the entire weight, then a gigantic cracking sound as they failed in their duty, before the building simply folded in on itself like a collapsing house of cards.

  “Dimeter!” Marjan yelled his name, surprised to find that he was concerned about the young mage, but even as he called he knew it was too late. Unless he had escaped before hand, he was now buried, probably crushed, underneath that pile of masonry and burnt flesh in front of him. The chances of his survival were not good. Despite that he quickly began the task of freeing him, cutting away furiously with his blade of fire and then using his magic of force to simply push each new hunk of flesh away from him, to fall to the ground somewhere on the far side of the building.

  Once again the others joined him, and the entire sky lit up with the magic of their fire and heat, but this time instead of cutting away just a corner of the great beast’s body, they had to cut away almost all of it and that was no small task. Untold tons of foul smelling cooked blubber had to be removed, and he didn’t even ask where the rangers were dragging it off to. Wherever it went he knew, it would pollute the land, and somehow he doubted that there would be many scavengers who would even try to eat it. In the end, they might just have to burn it, if it even burned. But that was a problem for the morning.

  Three long hours passed and then a fourth and a fifth before the hill had become a small mound, and the rangers could start working on the collapsed masonry itself, and it seemed even longer to Marjan who knew that any chance of saving the adept from his own stupidity if he still lived was swiftly passing them by.

  Then finally, when the sweat was pouring off him, and while teams of rangers and horses were busy dragging away pieces of the cottage, and others walked all over the remains, hunting for his body and attaching hooks to each new piece of rubble to be dragged away by teams of horses with ropes, came the cry. A ranger standing on the top of the flattened cottage, somewhere about where the main room would have been, had found something, and everyone stopped.

  Others swiftly joined him, and then together they began to lift what had once been part of a wall, carefully placing hooks around its edges and getting the horses to slowly drag it into an upright position, before finally pushing it over and away from the
m.

  “Healers!” The call went out and for a moment Marjan’s heart skipped a beat as he realised the young mage could still somehow be alive, but he said nothing as he watched a pair of elven healers clamber on to the remains of the building and then start bending over a small depression in it, conferring among themselves and letting a little of their own healing magic free. He could see the pale blue warmth from it, glowing in the darkness, and Marjan knew a measure of hope that it wasn’t being wasted. It was only then, when he knew there was a chance, that he bowed his head in a quick prayer of thanks and hope to the Lord of Magic.

  “This one has hated you, spoken against you in public and private again and again, called for your removal from the town and the province, and now killed innocents, yet you still wish to save him?” The captain had found him again as they waited, quite possibly he’d been there beside him all the time, and he had a right to be curious. He was right too, and even Marjan had to think for a moment before he found the answer within him.

  “I was once like him, young, stupid and arrogant, and I too once made a terrible mistake that cost a life. I do not like him, as I do not like who I was, and I will speak as a witness against him at the trial as the truth requires, but he is still my brother. For a wizard, taken from his own kin at a young age, that is often all the family we know.” It was true too, though it had been a long time since he had reflected upon that simple fact. The Guild was more than a professional body or a school for the arcane, it was family, which was why it hurt so very greatly to be expelled from it. An exiled wizard was in truth an orphan.

  They stood there in silence for a while, waiting as the healers worked, and then waiting some more as a pair of elves arrived with a stretcher, and a limp body was hoisted on to it, before being carried away at a run, and Marjan knew from their haste that Dimeter’s life still hung in the balance. But there was still a chance for him. It was something, more than he had left Ferris and this other man with.

  In time, if he recovered, he would be tried and judged by the elders and by the Guild, and Marjan had no doubt he would be found guilty, and then he would have to begin the same painful journey he had begun a decade before. But that was not something he would have changed even if he could have. Dimeter had to learn his lesson just as he had. Instead of dwelling on such things he knew, he had one more duty to perform this night.

  “Captain Saul, Mage Ferris had a daughter and a sister, and I would guess that this man too had a family. It falls to me to tell my brother’s family of the terrible news of his death, to give what comfort I can, and to be there to apologise for the actions of my brother Dimeter when the others are told the same of their kin.” He didn’t want to, he would have rather done anything else, but it wasn’t really a choice.

  “As it falls to us all.” Together they slowly walked off towards the nearest ramp, joined by a couple of priests and several elders who mysteriously turned up out of nowhere to walk with them, all of them lost in silence, lost in sadness.

  The moon was already setting by then, and soon the sun would be making another appearance, the night was finally ending, and yet it seemed to him, that the darkness would remain with him for a long time to come.

  ****************

  Chapter Fourteen.

  “How goes the hearing?” Essaline’s voice came from just behind him as he sat on a bench staring blankly out over the great vegetable gardens and orchards of Evensong where many others were toiling away, and Marjan was grateful for her question. It had already been a long day and he suspected that it would not be the last. The hearing was expected to be completed this day, but the bitter taste of the crime it had been called together to determine and the coldness of the criminal it judged still remained in his mouth and along with so many other faults of the young wizard, it would not be gone so quickly.

  Neither would the smell, and though it had taken a whole day and every wagon that the elves owned, not to mention nearly a thousand workers, the kraken’s body had finally been disposed of, carted away piece by piece the best part of a league to where a deep chasm had formed long ago, and then dumped over the side, eventually to be covered with dirt. But despite that, some of the stench of the great beast remained, a terrible combination of rotting seaweed, stagnant seawater and burnt flesh that still assailed the senses. The druids were summoning rain each evening to try and wash away what remained of the great beast, but even in death and having been buried its remains lingered.

  Worse than that though, they had been poisonous, and now everywhere the great beast had lain, under each and every one of its terrible tentacles and especially the bulk of its body, the grass had died, leaving behind a dead brown shadow that was almost a scar on the land. Though the druids would continue to work their magic upon the land, he suspected it would be a long time before that scar finally disappeared.

  He stood up and turned to greet her, glad of a friendly face on such a hard day, and especially of such a beautiful one, and she was beautiful. Dressed in yet another svelte white cotton summer robe with a lemon yellow sash around her waist for contrast, with wild flowers of all colours draped haphazardly through her long golden hair, and a smile on her face that would have outshone the sun, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  “Better now that you’re here.” She came to him just as he’d hoped for, took his hand and then wrapped him up in a brief hug, even giving him a quick peck on the cheek before backing off to a more respectful distance. She was like that he’d discovered as they’d continued their courtship, too affectionate by half, at least according to her people’s customs, though he wouldn’t complain. Her aunt was constantly telling her off for it, tut-tutting away and endlessly lecturing them both on proper decorum, though he noticed that this time her aunt was nowhere in sight. He wasn’t sure whether that was a breach in protocol or not, but he wasn’t going to complain.

  “Then I am glad to be here.”

  “As am I.”

  “And Dimeter’s trial?” Suddenly the clouds returned though they still couldn’t completely block out the glorious sunshine that was Essaline. He took a deep breath before answering her.

  “He still can’t even seem to acknowledge that he committed a crime. I’m not sure he even understands that he has. Ferris and Sulina are already forgotten, their families are as nothing to him, even when sitting in the chamber across from him. He doesn’t see their grief. The stench doesn’t seem to bother him, and I doubt he’s even looked at the damage the beast did to the land. All he can say is that his experiment went wrong, that it was all an unfortunate accident, and he keeps repeating that phrase a hundred times an hour.” His attitude annoyed Marjan, more than he could truly understand, not because of the price of his mistake, but because it seemed to him that the young wizard cared nothing for that price, for those who had died. How could he even dream of becoming a Guild wizard with such a terrible lack of compassion? How could the Guild have let him get so far? Of course that hope was over now, even if the youngster didn’t seem to understand it.

  In truth the only emotions he seemed to show in the council chamber, were pain from his injuries which even three tendays later and after the healers had tended to him diligently despite his crimes against their people and their town, still troubled him, anger if not violent rage for Marjan, especially when he had given his evidence, and some fear as the three masters overseeing the hearing for the Guild, looked like punishing him. They at least he seemed to respect, or fear, perhaps for him they were the same thing. Dimeter did not want to become a maverick, yet that was the least of what his likely punishment would be.

  Major summonings, without a properly spelled arena or warded portal, calling forth the greatest of beasts for no apparent reason, or not one that he would share, and not even deigning to inform anyone of his foolishness, from a Guild perspective it broke so many rules and it was so stupid that it was almost incomprehensible that anyone would do such a thing. More than that however, he was making mistake
s, casting his magic foolishly and without thought. Bringing the kraken here, on to land, that was a mistake though a lucky one when he considered what he could have summoned, as was blasting out the wall of his cottage as he tried to escape and bringing everything down on top of him. Foolish mistakes a first year apprentice shouldn’t have made, but mistakes that an arrogant adept might.

  He would be expelled from the Guild, of that there could be no doubt, but that would probably not be the limit of his punishment. Marjan had no idea at all what the elves, and in particular the elders, might believe of his actions or accept of his excuses, or what they would demand as punishment, but thus far they had seemed less than impressed with the lad.