by Damien Lake
“Yeah, that sounds good. We’ll stop by the nearest supply shop and pick up a few bushels of them.”
“I might have suggested a thousand mages, except you did little beyond making them think twice.”
“Well,” Marik hesitated. “Don’t judge that by me. A better mage like Tollaf, or a different magic user like Jeremy or Caresse would probably be able to kill those monsters without breathing hard. Tollaf would know what in the hells those white-robes were about, and probably be able to jam a stick in their spokes while he was at it.”
“Let’s wish for a deer made of toothpicks to carry us to the fairy-glen ball while we are at it.” Dietrik sighed, then reluctantly mentioned, “Have you thought about that mirror at all?”
“Mirror?”
“In my pack.” He tossed his head to gesture at his back. “I think it might be a good idea to contact your mage friend.”
“Celerity?” Marik’s guts filled with ice. “Don’t call her my friend, will you? What could she do to help us anyway? She’s halfway across the kingdom.”
“She did want to know about any developments. I think this qualifies. The outpost captain might not have gotten word out, and who knows what havoc the creatures have played throughout the patrol line.”
“I don’t know.”
“Also,” Dietrik added, still unhappy, “there’s Colbey. Something is changing with him. I’m not certain, but I would feel better if we had another out rather than him alone. Celerity might be able to send us reinforcements if she knows where we are.”
“I…well,” Marik stared at his feet. “I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think too long, mate. Time is a luxury we can no longer bandy about, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah. And I’m afraid you might be right, Dietrik.”
Chapter 33
The sudden encounter in the trees embarrassed Marik into keeping a tighter watch the rest of the march. No one suggested he might be at fault, let alone blamed him outright. His ability to see auras was their best defense against the foreigners roaming the forest, trespassers who were increasing in number by the mark. Four times Colbey returned to steer them around parties he had scouted. Two came near enough for the men to see.
Hidden by the thick foliage, the mercenaries remained invisible provided they suppressed any urges to dance the latest court jigs. Given Kineta’s hissed promises, every man somehow found the restraint to remain still.
Neither hostile party kept the mercenaries pinned down for long. Marik’s relieved sighs were echoed, if faintly, when the black soldiers pushed deeper into the forest without any hunting about. They must believe their quarry had run deep into the forest to escape pursuit. This misestimation aided the Kings, and they slunk toward the western mountains, pausing only to let the soldiers pass them by. That might change instantly when the enemy officers realized a unit had gone missing.
Colbey brought them to the Stoneseams less than half a mile from the forest’s northwestern corner by late afternoon. The Rovasii abutted the mountains, leaving no space between its trees and the range’s abrupt rise.
No rolling hills eased the progression from flatter land to mountainous terrain. The brown rock walls could have been dagger blades resting on edge. At other places, Marik knew, the grade lessened. Perhaps a man could climb spans apart from the rare passes through these peaks, but no escape existed here. A rockgoat would have despaired, gazing upon this sheer wall.
Though far too steep to climb, the mountains were the opposite of arrow-shot straight. Hardly a hundred yards existed without bends or folds. To Marik they resembled the curtains he had seen in the odd tavern, the fabric pleated together when unstretched across the window. There were concealed pockets through narrow crevices that were devilishly hard to see from any angle except straight on. Colbey brought them single-file into one that opened into a tall hollow large enough to hold the command building without difficulty.
Sunlight only fell directly down onto a small patch. The hollow blossomed into a bowl on the mountainside several hundred feet above them. Light bouncing from rock wall to rock wall provided enough illumination to see by and shrouded the lower reaches in a gloom usually reserved for the early false dawn.
The men gratefully found cold perches to rest upon. Snow had not found its way through the bowl, or else had melted fast, though that seemed unlikely since the cold bit with sharper fangs than outside. Minimal sunlight prevented the winter temperatures from bowing in submission.
Boulders and shifted rock littered the hollow, its floor canted beneath the rubble. It made walking a cautious proposition. Marik found it easier to sit atop a large bolder with a minimal curve rather than search for a flat patch of ground. He might never find one anyway.
Marik chose to wait just beyond the crevice’s last bend. He wanted to be near the narrow entrance so he could watch for enemies lucky enough to stumble on their hidden sanctuary. Also, if a demon-beast could squeeze through, he wanted no one between his orbs and the target. Dietrik sat on the next lower boulder, which placed his head close to Marik’s foot, using the rest period to examine his rapier for the first time since the skirmish.
First Unit, being the first to ingress, worked their way further back to allow Fourth Unit the room they needed. Sloan had entered with the First. During their quick conference moments earlier, the sergeants had decided one should enter first in case of possible danger inside. He had immediately decided she would be the one left standing outside.
Sloan worked his way back to where Kineta stood beside the narrow crack in the mountain wall. Marik heard him assure her that the hollow possessed no back entrance before the two debated their next action.
The two made no effort to keep any decisions they reached a secret. Nevertheless, Kineta cast several hard glances at Marik. They were standing beside the crevice and Marik, using his magesight to instantly notice any shift in color from sneaking bodies, appeared to be staring at them.
“What do you have to add?” she demanded. Dietrik kept his attention focused on his rapier. “If you’ve worked out a brilliant mage scheme, I, for one, would love to hear it.”
From her tone, Marik understood more than he wished to. Kineta had never given the men in her unit any slack, keeping them firmly under her thumb. The past few days had rattled the cool surety she used to assert her will over the meatheads under her command. She hated this on-the-fly decision making since it kept her from making full use of her resources.
Marik had come to think of her as a hard, no-nonsense yet extremely efficient commander. She made use of what was available to her, so reined in her men from haring off, following their own ideas.
It made no difference that he was outside her unit. She was the senior acting sergeant. Plain on her face was the suspicion that this half-mage might be entertaining ideas of self-aggrandizement without consideration for the unit’s welfare. So far he had performed effectively against their unknown enemies since the battle in the pass, saving their hides during the long run, safeguarding their trek through the woods by keeping watch as no others could. If he were starting to think that he alone had the skill to take command and see them through, then she intended to crush that notion from him right there and then.
All these thoughts flashed through Marik’s mind before her last word faded. “No ideas from me, sergeant. I’m only using what skills I happen to have, as best I can.”
He meant to suggest that he was like any other man in the squad. Swordsmen had sword skills, archers had archery skills, others had herb lore, cooking or hunting skills. The band liked each man to contribute his expertise to the whole, after all.
Kineta’s eyes narrowed. Marik realized the sergeant misinterpreted the remark to mean that the half-mage had taken it into his head to start acting on his own. “So what are you’re doing with your fabled skills, then?” she barked. “Weaving a pitfall in the corridor? Or maybe summoning a fire demon to kill the beasts if they find our hole?” She managed to sound scornful
, annoyed and questioning all at once.
Marik sighed, and made no effort to hide it. In fact he wanted her to see the exasperation he could not voice. “I couldn’t do any of that if I wanted to. Besides, I don’t know if there is such a thing as a ‘fire demon’. I only meant that I can usually see other people before they come too close.” He waited a long breath before adding, “You remember that from before?”
Kineta scowled, but the brief inspection Marik had performed that morning for Sloan resurfaced in her mind. “I would have greater confidence in that if we hadn’t been waylaid not four marks agone. Still, we have to make do with the materials at hand.” She probably gave no thought to the inherent insult in her comment, speaking as she did to vent her frustrations. It would have irritated him except he had been dressing himself down since the incident.
“I haven’t seen anybody for a while. Colbey saw us through safely, but I don’t know how many soldiers are crawling through the woods.”
“I thought you could see these folks,” Kineta challenged with a sharp edge. The days had stressed her. He held his tongue since he understood her frustrations. “If you didn’t see anybody, then they must not be there to be seen, is that correct?”
“It’s not that simple, sergeant. No one was near enough for me to see, same as they weren’t close enough for you to see. But for all I know, there could fifty of those small parties roaming in the trees a mile away.”
“What good—” Kineta began snapping, but Sloan cut her off.
“Are there?”
Marik returned his sergeant’s gaze. “Give me a few minutes to find out. I can’t walk and see beyond the limits of normal sight at the same time. I have to be sitting still.”
Sloan nodded a curt approval. Marik shifted on the boulder so his weight distributed evenly. Falling from the perch while his self drifted through the etheric plane would be a harsh price to pay. With all these fractured rocks, he would undoubtedly twist an arm or a leg between the many crannies until it broke.
Kineta crossed her arms. She breathed heavily through her nose and glared while she boiled under her skin, a sound that Marik happily cut off by drifting from his body. The etheric’s dead silence enveloped him while he floated from the hollow to hover over the mountainside.
Bellow, the vast forest stretched in a vibrant green unmatched on the physical plane. Marik had made his best effort to describe plant auras to Dietrik, coming closest with the candle explanation. He had held his hand before the flame, showing his friend the way the light shone through his closed fingers in a peach-colored glow. If it had been the fresh, bright green of dandelion stems, that would have been a nearly perfect match.
Birds flitted through the leaves. Squirrels darted through the forest. The trees were tall enough to make them look like fish swimming in a green sea. He never appreciated how much life filled so small an area until he could separate them from the vegetation, a feat impossible with ordinary vision.
He needed to search for marauding soldiers. With so thick a tree cover to peer down through, they might actually be smothered under the dense forest aura. Best to search from below. Marik plunged feet-first through the ground outside the hollow until he hovered underneath the Rovasii, looking up through starry constellations of worms and insects.
Three large auras caught his attention as they moved against the green background.
He sped closer. Only deer. Two females and a larger buck guarding them, antlers flicking sideways as it searched for danger. It ignored the rabbits when the grazing does startled them from the tall grass. Peace and calm ruled.
Marik crisscrossed beneath the trees, at times shooting up through the canopy for overhead views, working his way south. After five minutes he felt reasonably certain that there were no soldiers near the mountains. Five groups were working their way south into the deep forest. The nearest stumbled along two miles east.
He winged his way back rather than instantly snapping into his body. The extra journey might reveal a detail he had overlooked. It did not, as he’d assumed, but before reentering the hollow, he decided he may as well do the job right. A quick hop north brought him to forest’s edge.
If he’d had breath, he would have expelled it. Dietrik had asked him earlier why he thought the black soldiers were sending such small parties after them, knowing their size to be larger than the twenty-man teams they were encountering. Marik had replied that they must have broken up into smaller units to cover the ground faster in hopes of finding them.
Was there any truth to that? He felt his confidence in the estimate drain away. A small army camped beyond the trees.
Several hundred men did not actually need much room, Marik knew. The Crimson Kings claimed a number of fighters beyond what he saw. But after adding the mounts these invaders rode, the tents that were being erected and the pack horses used by a fighting force that could ill-afford to be slowed by supply wagons, the space they consumed grew exponentially.
The fluctuating, multi-hued aura pool generated by the soldiers was dwarfed by the forest’s. Despite the skewed perspective, its size sickened Marik. He drifted toward the yellow-orange-red mass, a massive bowl filled with different sugary sweets through which rooted an unseen hand.
So many men were moving around the camp that their auras illuminated nearly everything. Enough life energy had concentrated and combined with the abundant vegetation’s light that the normal black silhouettes of inanimate objects were no longer their usual holes in the world. Marik could see an object’s distinction, as if straining hard in last half-minute before full nightfall. This had happened so rarely before that Marik trusted nothing he thought he saw. The faint marks on what looked to be a flag might stem from his desire to see something, rather than what he could actually discern.
Several of these probable flags were mounted on long poles planted in a circle around a broad tent. Four men stood on guard by the entrance flap, two on either side. Several figures approached, saluting with a closed fist against the heart instead of a flat palm to their brows. They all waited until a signal, unheard from the etheric, came from within. Each entered briskly. The flap never remained open for longer than the time required to duck through.
A commander’s tent, if Marik had ever seen one. That made this entire encampment more troubling that it already was.
He spent a further fast minute in hurried study before snapping back into his body. As always, the sensation, so like his mother jerking him hard by the collar when he had been about mischief, unbalanced him momentarily.
“I think we’re in trouble,” he murmured to Kineta to keep his voice from carrying deeper into the hollow.
She remained standing with arms crossed, nose wrinkling in response to Marik’s statement. “Deeper than the hole we’ve already dug our way into? I’d like to hear what makes you think that.”
Marik explained, the story washing over Sloan with no visible effect while Kineta tucked her thumbs into her belt and looked increasingly put out with every word. To her credit, she refrained from indulging in a satisfying barrage of cursing. She frowned at her boots and considered.
Colbey shifted on a rock across from Marik, making him notice the scout for the first time. He must have wandered over while he’d been drifting. Kineta cocked her head in Colbey’s direction, asking, “What do you know about them?”
“If they are there,” Colbey replied with a cold look at Marik, “then I know nothing of them. You instructed me to scout the forest ahead, as you recall.”
“We told you to find us a way out of this trap! With an army sitting atop our escape route, I don’t see a clear path!”
“Our path is set,” Colbey replied. Affronted anger tinged his voice. “Moving north without detection will not be difficult. The Stoneseams will hide us, as they do now. Careful movement from one concealment to the next is all that is required. I can keep you from their notice.”
“By his account,” Kineta retorted with a gesture at Marik, “this is hardly a s
imply scouting party blundering through the trees! A whole copping army!” She swiveled to face Sloan. “And a force that size after us alone? I don’t like the smell of it.”
“It is questionable,” Sloan agreed. “We don’t know how many black soldiers were truly at the outpost, so we can’t judge whether five-hundred men is a significant percentage or simply an expendable pursuit force.”
“Five-hundred men after a half-squad makes no tactical sense. What else is going on here?”
Marik, hoping she would not overreact, suggested, “Maybe what happened in Tullainia?” Kineta and Sloan focused on him. “These people set Tullainia on its ear, by all accounts.”
“We still don’t know why,” Kineta reminded him. “Were they hoping to conquer bloody Tullainia, or destroy it?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Marik said, emboldened by the sergeant’s reaction, even if still slightly hostile. “It’s the same result, isn’t it?”
Sloan mused, “If so, then our pursuit might not have been a chase as much as their forces deploying across southern Galemar from the pass. Their planned troop movements might have simply swept us before them like flotsam on the tide.”
Kineta retaliated forcefully. “Do not ever say that again! This isn’t the bloody Nolier War all over!”
“No, it is not,” Sloan agreed. “This is something else entirely.”
The other sergeant glared at that. She began muttering, wondering how they should proceed. Marik felt a tap on his foot and found Dietrik glancing upward.
His gaze held unspoken words Marik clearly read. Dietrik’s feelings were plain. Marik still felt conflicted. He had not reached a decision yet and wanted time to sort through it all.
Kineta noticed the two men in silent communication and demanded, “What do you two think you know?”
Marik jumped slightly, unable to prevent a guilty expression from gracing his features. “Oh, well…it’s nothing.”
