by Ben Galley
Verix sighed. She was becoming impatient. She turned to face north where a little forest of white tents had appeared on the hillside, near a growing building. There was a little train of people going to and from the city gates, bearing sacks and tables and flowers and chairs and clothes and food and rope and many, many other things that were apparently required for this upcoming festivity. A wedding. Verix had never seen a wedding. Her kind had no such thing. She had to admit, she was a little baffled. ‘On the brink of a war like no other, and the maid insists on her wedding,’ she mused. ‘How decidedly foolish.’
Heimdall barely heard her over the tumultuous noise. ‘Better it happen sooner, than later, do you not think?’
‘Better it not happen at all, brother. What target could be more tempting than a wedding where the guest list consists of every powerful mage the Arka have to offer? If I were the spawn, I would attack.’
Heimdall raised his chin a little. ‘Do you not think they know that? Elessi is adamant it go ahead. Why should they hide and cower? If the spawn is indeed capable of what we think she is, what the Lost Song says, then wedding or not, it will not make a difference when and where she strikes. Besides, they have prepared accordingly. The new Spire’s cellars are as fortified as the Arkathedral. The Written will be elsewhere, expecting the worst. As will the army, and the rest of the mages. Better to be wary, than to be surprised.’
Verix tilted her head, as was her habit. A flash of flame in the distance, to the east of the new Spire, caught her eye. In the training yards. ‘True indeed,’ she said. ‘It’s almost as if this wedding is bait.’
Heimdall hummed. ‘I knew it would be a matter of time before you guessed our plan. You are not the goddess of truth for nothing,’ he said.
‘Why did you not tell me? Am I not here to help?’
Heimdall wagged a finger. ‘You are, in other ways. Truth has its downfalls, Verix. We could not afford an honest tongue in the wrong place. ‘But if you value your life, I wouldn’t mention it around the maid. She doesn’t know.’
‘AGAIN!’ came the deafening, rasping order of the drill sergeant. A hundred hands punched the air with a shout of a spell. Flame roared. Smoke puffed. The air flexed and bowed as the heat rose.
‘ONE MORE TIME!’ The man’s guttural bark had the tonal quality of two rusty saws duelling. The mark of a true School instructor.
Once again, a hundred lips moved in unison, and a hundred palms threw bolts of fire into the azure sky. All except one. There was a cry as two recruits were soaked with ice-cold water. The sergeant found his prey and pounced.
‘By Njord’s festering ballsack!’ he yelled, stamping his way across the dusty training yard. The gathered recruits stood as still as they could possibly manage. They were the very epitome of mismatched miscellany. Any handful could have been dragged from their lines and not a single one would have anything in common with the next. They were farmhands, goatherds, veterans, butcher’s apprentices, travelling merchants, bored sailors, toothless brawlers, council members’ daughters, and freed slaves from across the sea. They were old, young, fat, malnourished, poor, rich, muddy, perfumed, bald, and coifed. Some had never seen the city before, some had never bothered to leave the comfort of their velvet-clad houses. Even their clothes were at odds. The pure, mind-boggling variety was an assault on the eyes.
But all of them, every single one, had felt the stirrings of magick in them to some degree or another. Down to the last hair on the very last head. Not in the history of the School had such an odd assortment of recruits been allowed through its prestigious, brutal doors. A blessing and a curse, all rolled into one.
‘Stand still, all of you!’ barked the sergeant. He had made his way to the back of the ranks, homing in on his quarry like a falcon, a red-faced and muscular falcon at that. Had the man not stood over six feet tall, had he not been built like the broad side of a house, his stormy face alone would have set the recruits quaking. His nose looked as though it had been on the wrong side of a row of knuckles too many times. Burst blood vessels decorated his cheeks. His russet hair was shaved into a wide, waxed line that ran from his brow to the back of his neck. Paraian fashion.
Had all of that failed to strike fear into the hearts of a recruit, then the man’s reputation would have finished the job up nicely. Exclamation was his middle name. Expletive his last. School rumours had it that Sergeant Toskig had once strangled a minotaur to death with his bare hands. It was also widely known that, while he had never been directly responsible, many a recruit had died under his instruction over the years. Learning magick was a dangerous game. The School was a dangerous board to play it on.
Toskig hauled a man out the furthermost rank and clapped him hard around the head. A man equally as tall and muscular, but with a fair face and a glum expression. It was the third time that day. He was beginning to bruise.
‘Gurmiss, you fecking idiot. For the last time! Get. Your. Spells. Right!’ bellowed Toskig, right in the man’s face. Each word was a slap in the face. Gurmiss nodded. He must have only been about twenty. From a privileged background too, by the looks of his clothes. ‘You a water mage, Gurmiss?’ demanded Toskig.
‘No, sir,’ replied Gurmiss.
‘Then why are you casting a water bolt spell in my fire class?’
Gurmiss made a face. He didn’t seem to be the brightest fish in the net. ‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Cast it again. Just you. Right now.’
‘Now?’
‘By Evernia’s wilting tits! Now, Gurmiss!’
Gurmiss began to mutter something and held his hands out in front of him. The men and women around him began to scatter. Toskig smacked him on the arm. ‘Back in line, gobshites! Point it up, you fool. Up!’
Gurmiss bit his lip and put his hand in the air. He cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and began to mutter anew. Seconds later his hand began to tremble. He planted his feet as instructed, and a fountain of orange flame burst into the air above his palm. Gurmiss’ glum face broke into a wide smile. Several of his nearby compatriots cheered quietly, relieved. Some of them were soaked to the skin.
Toskig clapped a hand to his head in exasperation. ‘Thank the bloody gods for that! Back in line!’
The recruits scrambled to do his bidding, readjusting their ranks as quickly as they could. They weren’t fast enough, and Toskig began laying about with the back of his hand again. ‘This is a military school for military recruits, not a dancing class, you sorry sacks of septic entrails! Start acting like it!’ Toskig took his place at the front of the formation and put his hands by his sides at attention. He stamped his foot, and the hundred recruits did the same. They tried their best to be snappy about it. Most failed. Toskig looked up to the heavens for help. He need only have looked behind him.
‘Working them hard I hope, Sergeant Toskig?’
The sergeant turned and immediately saluted the shorter man standing behind him. ‘Undermage Modren, sir!’
‘Sergeant,’ smiled Modren. He was wearing a suit of armour that defied the very definition of polished. Its overlapping steel plates veritably glowed. Toskig, clad in his own leather and iron half-plate for training, couldn’t help but gawp. Neither could half the recruits, but Toskig’s trained ear could hear the slackening of a recruit’s jaw at a hundred paces. He whirled around and glared at the front rank. ‘What are you drooling idiots gawking at? Twenty press-ups followed by three fire bolts! Quick as you can! Upright and thoroughly in the air! And if any of you stop before I say, I’ll flay you alive! Gods help me, I’ll make a tablecloth out of your hide and eat off it at the good Undermage’s wedding!’ he barked, clapping his hands to set the pace.
The recruits knew he wasn’t joking. They leapt to follow orders. Some of the more overweight recruits struggled, but they didn’t dare complain. Toskig turned back to Modren and pointed at the etched breastplate hugging his superior’s chest. The design of a gryphon was emblazoned there. ‘Arkmage Tyrfing’s handiwork?’
�
��Indeed it is.’
‘He isn’t showing any sign of slowing down, is he?’
‘Just broke a new spell this morning.’
‘What kind?’
‘More of the same. Anti-magick stuff, courtesy of our dusty friends of Arfell. Gods only know what’s going on in their libraries.’
‘Probably the same magickal malarkey as what’s going on here.’
Modren nodded. He took a step forward to stand beside the sergeant and together their narrowed eyes roved over the panting, sweating formation in front of them. They were hardly impressed.
Toskig doled out some encouragement at the top of his lungs. ‘To the dirt, Hoskis! I want to see a dust-print on that big nose of yours! You there, woman in the grey! Good work! Gurmiss, you lump! Faster, man!’ he yelled, and then bent down to whisper in Modren’s ear. ‘Truth be told, Undermage, I’ve never seen a group of recruits like them. I’ve never known six-monthers to suffer this much magick. Their spells might not be smooth yet, but their endurance is up there with one-years, maybe two-years…’ he paused to shout as a little puff of smoke wafted into the air. ‘That’ll teach you not to roll your sleeves up, Shariss! I hope that tunic was expensive!’
Modren stifled a dry chuckle. He could remember the sergeants of his day. They were all the same. Tough, brutal, and dangerous, but fair, somewhere deep down. He still had the scars with their names on, and from other days at the School. It wasn’t a gentle place, and it wasn’t just the instructors that the recruits had to be wary of. Given the tough selection processes, competition had been fierce in his day. Fierce, and often deadly.
But now, with the huge surge in recruits, the selection process had slackened to accommodate them all. The Arkmages couldn’t risk prospective mages slipping the net. Looking around, he could still spy a few bruises hiding in the hollows of tired eyes, the split lips lingering at the corners of mouths. The old ways still lingered, but now there was a new sort of trouble: accidents, over-crowding, under-staffing, inexperience… The list went on. But still, it was better than the alternative: even more accidents, people trying to train themselves; loose cannons, rogues… the list went on again. The Arka had to regulate this strange surge in magick users or suffer for it, pure and simple. The coffers were nearly drained because of it. Cuts had been made. Complaints issued.
Toskig spoke some of them aloud. ‘I’m used to training recruits from well-known families, your Mage, families with long-lines of magick and battle in their blood. I’m used to recruits who already know which bit of a sword you use to stick a man with, who already known how to spar and how to march. Those are the recruits I’m used to,’ he sighed. Toskig waved his hand towards a corner of the formation, where a score or so of fit-looking, grim-faced recruits had been clumped together. Modren’s keen eyes had already picked them out. Everything about them screamed future mage. These were the sons and daughters of soldiers and proud families and long lines. Even their tunics were noticeably sharper. They had most likely been training since they were children, always destined for the School. Modren had been one of them. In better days, some of them would have gone on to be Written.
‘But these,’ Toskig sighed again, ‘these people aren’t soldiers. Magick aside, they’re as useful as tits on a bull. If I had my way, I’d kick half of them out tomorrow and half again the next day.’
Modren shook his head. ‘Room must be made,’ he said firmly. Especially with a war crawling its way towards us.
‘But can we afford them all? We’ve already taken two cuts in coin. There’s barely enough food stockpiled for the next few months. It’s not just me that thinks this, Modren, it’s the rest of them too. Sergeant Haverfell and his mages say the same. The griping in the taverns at night is near deafening. Not to mention half the instruct…’
Modren cut him off sharply. He had heard the griping firsthand. Over the last three years, complaining seemed to have become the Arka’s national sport. ‘Orders are orders, Sergeant. I don’t like it any more than you do. The Arkmages have spoken.’
Toskig bit his tongue and nodded, and was about to apologise for speaking openly when Modren shrugged off his Undermage’s cape and threw it to the dust. As he unfastened his gauntlets and glittering vambraces, he rubbed his hands together, and the keys on his wrist flashed in the afternoon sunlight. ‘I know you’re only speaking the truth, Sergeant,’ he said, cracking his knuckles. ‘My hands may be tied, but they still know a spell or two. If I may,’ he gestured towards the ranks. Toskig let his sour face fall and began to grin from ear to ear. He took a deep breath and painted the air blue with it.
‘Right, you ugly cluster of clod-hopping gob-shites! Stop whatever it is you’re doing and salute Undermage Modren accordingly!’
There was a rustling applause of heels snapping together and hands quickly rising to temples.
‘At ease!’ barked Modren, testing his parade lungs. Rusty, but still there. He strolled up and down the front rank whilst Toskig introduced him, eyes hard and dangerous. He let his magick unfurl. He could see some of the recruits wince.
‘The man standing before you is as good as they come! A real mage. A Written no less! It’s a pleasure to have him on my training yard,’ shouted Toskig, following in Modren’s wake. ‘He’s going to show you a gods-damned thing or two, so clean out your ear holes and pay attention, or so help me I’ll end you right here in this yard and make the others do laps around your pyre. Do you hear me?’
A resounding blast of, ‘YES SIR!’ followed, and Toskig let Modren have the floor.
Modren took it with a will. He clapped his hands and lightning shivered up his arm. The recruits’ eyes widened. ‘Magick doesn’t make a mage,’ he began, quietly at first, ‘a soldier makes a mage.’ Modren let the lightning trickle down his arm, breathing in the hot smell of burning air wafting on the breeze, and then let it flow into his palms. With a clasp of his fists, the lightning died. The Undermage looked up and met the gaping eyes of the sweaty, gasping, and dusty recruits. Modren took a deep breath and readied himself to shout his lungs out.
The hammer kissed the glowing metal with its blackened face. A burst of flaxen sparks skidded along the anvil.
‘That will do,’ Tyrfing muttered, partly to himself, partly to the trio of scholars that stood patiently behind. The forge-room was blisteringly hot and clad in their thick Arfell robes, the scholars were sweating buckets. They held cloths to their foreheads as they watched the Arkmage pick up the hot steel plate with his bare fingers and place it back in the glowing firepot of the forge.
Tyrfing rubbed his fingers together to refresh his protection spell as he reached for a nearby glass of water. He stared pensively into the coals of his forge-fire, watching the yellows, the oranges, the dancing of the black and red.
‘Are you ready, Arkmage?’ One of the scholars piped up, a young man who seemed to be trying very hard to grow a beard, but somewhat failing.
‘Almost,’ replied Tyrfing, scratching at the itchy skin beneath his own beard. It was strange to think that Written, for all their fighting prowess, were actually perfect blacksmiths. Tyrfing wondered, with a wry smile, if their calling had been misinterpreted.
He sipped his water and rubbed some of the soot from his face. He had been in his forge all morning and for a sizeable chunk of the afternoon. He turned his gaze from the coals to the far wall, where sets of armour hung on nails and hooks. It was a vast wall, long and sparkling with the reflections of flames, bedecked with metal of all shapes, colours and sizes. There were some there that sparkled more than others. Only Scalussen armour could caress the light like that, as if longing for the flames that birthed it.
Scalussen armour cost an unspeakable amount of coin. Tyrfing’s ever-growing collection, spurred by the desire for his nephew’s return, had nearly drained the Arka coffers. It wasn’t all for Farden, however. Tyrfing had kept the other Written in mind. Almost every piece in his collection was spoken for. Nothing but the best, for the best. And the last.
It also hung there to inspire him. Scalussen armour and arms were near-perfection in metal form. Relics of a long-lost art. Tyrfing had challenged himself to breaking its secrets, secrets that most blacksmiths in Emaneska would gladly have cut off their own limbs for. Too long had they been lost. It was time to rediscover the Scalussen skill.
That was where the wise men of Arfell came in.
‘So,’ began Tyrfing, savouring the coldness of his water. The glass it swished around in was a trinket from the magick markets; a glass which kept its contents ice-cold no matter what, no matter how close to the forge-fire he left it. Tyrfing smiled as he placed the glass down. Nuisance or not, the magick markets produced some intriguing things. ‘You say that I have to burn the actual spell itself?’
‘It would appear so, Arkmage,’ replied the oldest of the three. A great, wizened fellow, part man, part beard.
‘Speaking aloud and burning seem to have the same effect. We thought it heresy when we first clapped eyes on a merchant burning cantrips in the main square of Arfell. We almost had him arrested,’ said a third, a plain fellow with the pink scars of vanquished acne splayed across his cheeks.
Tyrfing reached for his hammer. ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t.’
‘It takes young eyes to see past old tradition,’ said the young scholar, with a cheeky smile, garnering a glare and an elbow in the ribs from his colleagues. He winced.
Tyrfing smirked and turned back to his forge. He rubbed his dusty fingers together, feeling them go numb and cold, and then leant into the hearth to adjust the position of his glowing breastplate. ‘The spell?’ he asked, and moments later a pair of quivering tongs appeared by his side, a narrow strip of parchment clasped in their soot-laced teeth. The young man clutching them was leaning as far back as his short arm would allow, shielding his face. The air was so hot there it was barely breathable. Sweat dribbled down his cheeks in rivers. ‘Thank you,’ said Tyrfing, snatching the spell from the tongs and putting the scholar out of his misery. He scampered back to join his elders.
