“Officers.” Lucas shouted, his voice rising above all the other noise. “Gather your squads. All of them. Call every soldier to active duty. Triple the sentries, and await further orders from the general.”
His eyes found me only steps away from him.
“Spoken Mage, you’re with me. And you—” He pointed at the two soldiers who had managed to lift the injured man back to his feet. “Follow me.”
Six more of the royal guard had arrived while he issued his orders, and they didn’t hesitate to clear the path ahead of us, knocking people aside as needed. Lucas soon outstripped Reese and the soldiers with their wounded burden, but he didn’t slow to their pace. At a signal, four of his guards dropped back to stay with them, while the other four surrounded him.
I raced beside him, inside their protective circle. All of my earlier doubts were thrust aside next to the enormity of this news. Lucas had called me Spoken Mage, not Elena, and it was in that role I responded. Even the memory of the gully attack could not deter me. If the enemy intended to attack this camp and my friends within it, I would fight to defend them.
We almost ran, taking the straightest path possible, and yet the news somehow managed to precede us. On every side I heard voices calling warning of an attack, and as we crossed through the double gates, the alarm bell began to sound.
Lieutenant Martin must have kept his word because the soldiers at the doors of headquarters made no attempt to hinder our passage. Or perhaps they were dissuaded from intervening by the aggressive posture of the guards who kept two steps in front of the prince.
We swept into the building, Lucas and me still not having exchanged any words, and straight to the command room. We met the general in the passage, on his way to the entrance hall. At sight of us he stopped and strode back in at Lucas’s side.
“What is this talk of attack?” he asked, all business. “I have received no reports.”
Lucas immediately relayed the message of the injured man, seeming to have memorized his exact words. The general’s eyes narrowed and then widened.
“A full-scale attack? We haven’t had one of those for—” He eyed Lucas and my white robes.
“Twenty years,” said Lucas. “We haven’t fought one off in twenty years. And that time we had enough warning to call all the able-bodied young mages in the kingdom to the front.”
I tried to remember if I’d learned about that attack in school. Twenty years was before I had been born, although only just. And then I realized. That must have been the attack that resulted in our unusually small year group. Mages at the right age to be bearing children had been otherwise occupied that year.
I shivered. Twenty years was a long time. Why now?
“And you’re sure this man was one of ours? An intelligencer, I presume?” The general frowned, clearly considering the possibility of a false warning, although I couldn’t imagine what the purpose of such a thing would be.
“He’s one of ours,” said Captain Matthis, exploding through the door and only just halting before he collided with us all. “I sent him out myself two years ago.”
For one second the general stood in silence, absorbing the news, and then he roared for his aides as the command room erupted.
“The squads are assembling and awaiting your commands,” Lucas told the general who nodded once before moving to the next person requiring his attention.
Lucas took a step backward and then another, as two aides pushed past him, too frantic to notice who they thrust aside. I grabbed his arm, ignoring the disapproving gazes of his guards, and dragged him to the side of the room.
“Do you believe me now?” I whispered urgently.
He frowned at me.
“A full-scale attack, and we heard not a whisper of it? The intelligencer himself said that they sent messages, that two tried to come in person before him. Are you still going to deny we have a traitor?”
Lucas frowned. “Kallorway—”
“What?” I cut him off. “Suddenly discovered every one of our message systems on their own? Worked out how to dismantle our communication systems? How to stop our intelligencers?”
He shifted uncomfortably.
“How did they do that, Lucas?” My eyes darted around the room. “Or did some of the messages get through only to be squashed on this end?”
In the background, the general barked orders into balls of power. Already answers were coming back. Advance scouts had been sent out, experienced mage officers with robes full of compositions.
The intelligencer had spoken the truth. An enormous army had already reached the far bank of the Abneris. Fear reflected in some of the younger officers’ eyes, but the older mages had no time for fear in their frenzied efforts to direct our defense.
“We must stop them at the river,” the general barked. “If they cross the river, the whole camp will be lost.” He continued to shout orders, sending squad after squad to defensive positions on the riverbank.
“I don’t know much about war,” I murmured to Lucas, “but is it really wise to send them all? Shouldn’t some remain behind as a last line of defense?”
The crash of the closing town gates sounded in the distance, punctuating my words.
Lucas hesitated, indecision on his face. I grasped a handful of his robe, pulling him down so that I could speak more quietly into his ear.
“You get more information than the rest of us. How are the intelligencers’ reports received? Who has access to them?”
Lucas’s eyes darted straight across the room to General Griffith.
“I knew it!” I whispered.
“The procedure changed after the attack on the gully,” Lucas said, every word reluctant. “The enemy knew we would be there. Someone—or some working—must have tipped them off.”
My eyes narrowed. So the top levels of command had acknowledged it—just not to me.
“What was the new procedure?” I asked.
“All reports go straight to the general, and all communication compositions are directed to him.”
“And you still want to claim there’s no chance at all he’s a traitor? Maybe we should ask that intelligencer just how he was sending his earlier messages—and to who.”
Lucas hesitated for only the fraction of a second before striding back into the center of the room.
“General.”
Griffith glanced our way, his gaze skimming over us and back to the aide beside him before he processed who had spoken and turned to face us.
“Your Highness? I think it would be best if you—”
“Where is the intelligencer?” asked Lucas. “Reese should have healed him by now. We need to find out how much more he knows, he may have valuable intelligence about the attack. And I would request that I be present when he is questioned.”
The general frowned. “Fine. You may do the questioning yourself. Inform me of any valuable intelligence.” He turned back to his aide.
Lucas’s gaze swept the room, but the injured man and his entourage hadn’t made it inside.
“Do you think they’re at headquarters yet?” I asked.
“They should be.” Lucas sounded grim. “Come on.”
Together we hurried back out into the corridors of the mansion. The entryway now swarmed with soldiers, officers, and terrified townsfolk demanding answers. Standing on tiptoe, I unsuccessfully tried to scan the crowd.
“Can you see them? There are too many people in here, I can’t see anything.” I wasn’t sure Lucas could even hear me over the din.
Lucas’s hand snaked out suddenly, hauling a passing soldier from the crowd. I recognized him—or rather his bulging muscles.
“You,” Lucas said. “Where is the healer and his patient?”
The man nodded, grunting something that might have been Lucas’s title. “The purple robe insisted he needed somewhere quiet to work. We left them down there.” He pointed back down the corridor. “Second door after the big room.”
Lucas and I took off running. Slid
ing past the double doors into the former ballroom, Lucas pushed open the second door. I collided with his suddenly motionless form.
“Lucas, what—”
He stepped forward, and the question died on my lips. The small room was clearly sleeping quarters of some kind, perhaps for some of the general’s aides, and it was empty. Empty except for the limp figure of the intelligencer lying on a cot against the far wall, his blood soaking into the blanket beneath him.
Lucas knelt beside him and then looked up at me.
“Dead.”
I drew in a shaky breath, steadying myself against the door.
“His wounds, perhaps?” I suggested, but Lucas’s shaking head silenced me.
“Where’s Reese?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him. You don’t think he…” I let my voice trail off, not sure whether I meant to accuse Reese or whether I feared for his safety.
“We need to speak to the general.” Lucas wiped the blood from his hand and joined me at the door.
“But the general—”
“We don’t have any proof, Elena.” Lucas slammed his hand against the wall. “And we’re in the middle of a full-scale attack. Do you really want to accuse our commander of treason right now? What if we’re wrong?”
I looked away. If there was even a chance we were wrong…If it was someone else…
“And the general didn’t do this.” Lucas gestured at the body behind us.
“Not personally,” I muttered.
He ignored me. “Griffith could be in danger for all we know. We need to get back to the control room.”
I trailed behind him, my eyes darting from side to side as I waited for someone to leap from the shadows and attack.
But no danger sprang out at us, and back inside the control room, the chaos had noticeably diminished. Most of the mages had disappeared, leaving only a small handful of aides furiously scribbling at desks in a corner. They handed off their completed compositions to gray-clad soldiers—newcomers to this previously mage-run sanctuary—who ran them to the general. He did the tearing himself now, speaking into each ball of power before reaching for the next parchment.
The noise levels had lowered significantly, and the aides receiving reply messages now sat along one wall. As if even the few seconds it took to walk back and forth to their normal side room were too valuable to be wasted.
The general glanced up at us. “Still here, are you? Good. This is the safest place for you, for now. But have your guards draw up an evacuation plan. I’ve sent every available mage to the river, but if we can’t hold them off, we need to get you out.”
Lucas ignored the talk of evacuations. “He’s dead. Our intelligencer is dead.”
“What?” Griffith looked up, shock on his face. I examined him closely but didn’t know him well enough to read if the emotion was real.
“And Reese is gone.”
“Gone? Do you mean…”
Lucas shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve seen no sign of him.”
I tried not to imagine Reese lying dead in some room of the mansion. We might not have liked each other much, but he did spend his days saving lives. And he was Beatrice’s relative. I didn’t wish him dead.
“We must—”
But whatever the general intended to order was lost as Leila came tumbling into the room, shouting for the general as if she were not a lowly private. All sound in the room stopped as everyone turned to look at her.
“A townsman at the front door,” she panted out. “He only just made it back into the town before they sealed the gates. He was down south searching for a strayed sheep, barely in range of the bells. He brought these.”
She thrust out a small collection of compositions. The general took them off her with a hard look. These had no place in the hands of a commonborn soldier or the herdsman who had apparently handed them to her.
“He found an officer on the brink of death apparently.” She looked white, and her voice shook. “He gave him these rather than risk them falling into enemy hands. And he had a warning, too.” She looked confused and nervous as if she was passing on a message she didn’t understand. “There’s a breach team on its way.”
An indrawn breath from General Griffith brought my head swinging back toward him. From the stunned look on his face, the news meant more to him than it did to Leila.
“A breach team,” said Lucas quietly. “Perhaps we should have guessed.” He met the general’s eyes. “They must be stopped, of course.”
A faint memory surfaced from armed forces studies. A breach team was a relic of the old wars when mages existed in greater abundance. A team made up entirely of mages, drawn from across the disciplines. Wind workers and creators to bring down buildings and walls, officers to fight any who might oppose them, and healers turned to the darkest of roles—assassins who knew every way a person might be killed.
Breach teams had been sent in situations just like this, with one purpose. To break through into the most heavily defended headquarters and assassinate those in command. With coordination and communication gone, our squads would soon break apart, chaos ensuring our battlefield defeat.
Griffith leafed quickly through the compositions in his hand.
“No communication workings left. It could be true.”
I looked between the general and Lucas. Both men would surely be on the breach team’s assassination list. And their approach only highlighted the truth of Lucas’s earlier words to me. We could not afford to take out our leadership in the middle of battle. That would only be doing the enemy’s work for them.
“We have to send a team to stop them,” said Lucas. “They cannot be allowed to breach the town.”
The general looked around the nearly empty command center.
“All my strongest squads and officers are already in the midst of battle. I have no one left to send.”
I stepped forward. “Then it’s a good thing not all the mages present are under your command. Not all of us with strength are fighting.”
Lucas stepped up beside me. “Yes, we will go.”
Griffith shook his head, the light that had filled his eyes at my words dimming.
“I cannot send a prince into battle.”
“Then we will all fall. The Spoken Mage does not go without me.”
“We’re here, too,” said an unexpected voice behind us. Clarence stepped into my line of sight with Araminta.
“What are you doing here?” Lucas asked.
“They called for all the squads to assemble, and Colonel Jennica assigned us to your team, remember,” said Araminta. “We knew you had come here, so we followed.”
“Where are the others?” I asked, sudden fear gripping me.
“With Captains Matthis and Carson, I think,” said Clarence. “And Lorcan and Thornton must be with them, too. We haven’t seen them here at any rate.”
Terror washed over me. They were out there fighting, then.
“We have to go,” I said. “There’s no time to debate it. For all we know even a minute wasted here may turn the tide against us.”
“I cannot—” repeated the general, but Lucas cut him off.
“You must.”
Griffith growled. “Very well, for your own sake as much as mine. But take your guards and any of my soldiers you can find. You!” He turned on Leila. “Gather up anyone you can find other than the door guards and go with His Highness.”
Leila saluted before sprinting from the room. Griffith glanced around at his aides, his eyes latching onto Martin.
“And I’m putting you in charge, Lieutenant.”
Martin stood to attention and saluted.
To Lucas, the general said, “He’s the most competent one I have left. You may be royalty, but he has battle experience. Let him lead you.”
Lucas nodded, and the general turned once more to Martin. Stepping close, he growled softly, “Whatever happens, keep the prince alive.”
Chapter 22
Martin
saluted again, and the five of us took off running. As we burst from the building, Leila appeared with four soldiers in tow, although only one I recognized. Tobias.
Ten of us, then. A squad. Plus four of Lucas’s royal guards.
“This way,” Martin said. “They’ve closed the gates, but I know a way out of the town.”
He led us to where a few houses nestled against the southern wall. Signaling for us to wait, he slipped through the front door. What felt like an eternity, but could only have been moments, passed before he reappeared and waved us inside.
We filed through to a back room where an older man held open a cupboard door. He nodded grimly at us as we appeared and gestured for us to pass through into the storage space. Martin went first, dropping to his hands and knees and crawling through a hatch in the back wall of the cavity.
We followed one at a time, crawling through brief darkness before emerging on the outside of the town wall. Moonlight illuminated clear ground on the opposite side of Bronton to the camp. Martin pulled out a composition before eyeing my fellow trainees.
“I should have asked what compositions you have on you.”
“This is a war camp,” Lucas said. “We carry everything we have on us at all times.”
Clarence and Araminta both nodded, their faces set into determined expressions, despite the terrifying circumstances. I knew they must both have far fewer compositions than Lucas. But then they’d been studying here for months without any action to drain their supplies. Hopefully they had enough.
“Good,” said Martin. “But I’m assuming you don’t have any homing compositions of your own?” He lightly shook the parchment in his hand.
I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Can I see?”
Martin hesitated. “It will only work for me.”
I shook my head impatiently. “I just want to read it.”
“Give it to her,” said Lucas.
Martin glanced at him, and then handed the parchment to me. Griffith may have put the lieutenant in charge, but Lucas was still a prince.
I scanned the words. When ripped, the composition would send power sweeping through the surrounding area looking for enemy soldiers or workings. If it found either, it would send back a pulse of power to guide the mage to the spot.
Voice of Dominion (The Spoken Mage Book 3) Page 22
