Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4)

by Michael G. Manning

  “You just told the sub-marshal that the Prophet doesn’t have a sizable force close enough to do anything yet,” she pointed out.

  He nodded. “It doesn’t have to be very many. A couple of sorcerers could produce a rockslide and cause us all kind of trouble.” Remembering what had happened to him and Selene made the possibility all too real.

  “Tonight should be fun then,” said Laina. “You’ll get to see your friend too.”

  He already knew who she meant. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

  She pointed at her eyes, then at him. “I’m watching you.”

  Will sighed. “Janice already has her sights set on someone else. Plus, I’m taken, if you’ve forgotten.”

  “Women have layers, brother dear,” she answered affectionately. “We’re like onions. Never think that just because you’ve seen one layer you know anything about what lies beneath.”

  “Humans are humans. Men and women aren’t that different.”

  Laina laughed. “And that is why I’m here as your bodyguard. You’re incredibly talented, brother mine, but you have some glaring blind spots.”

  Chapter 25

  Will stared suspiciously at the road ahead. Not only was it now barely wide enough for a single wagon, but over the course of the next quarter mile the hills rose steeply on either side of it. Scouts had been sent out the night before, and they’d returned safely in the morning with nothing particular to report. At the extreme end of their ride, they’d seen a few campfires in the distance, probably enemy scouts or light elements of the Darrowan military withdrawing toward the walled safety of Klendon.

  All he could be relatively sure of was that there wasn’t a sizeable force of the enemy in the vicinity, but still the narrow road made him nervous. Gregory Nicht edged his horse closer, then asked, “Ready to proceed?”

  Will held up a hand. He was watching two other figures ride toward him from the rear of the column. “Almost.” When the two men had reached him, he studied their faces. “Is everyone in place?”

  Emory Tallowen answered first. “Right side is ready, sir.” Burke Leighton’s response came a second later. “We’re ready on the left side as well.”

  Will nodded, then looked at Janice, who was sitting atop a piebald mare on his left. “Maybe I should take the front. I’d feel better with you on the tail end of this snake.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The middle of the first column is the best we’ll allow you,” she replied, glancing at Laina, who was clearly in agreement. “The very reason you’re nervous about me being there is exactly why you cannot be.”

  Laina chuckled. “Never fear, my lord. I’ll keep you safe in the center.”

  He ignored the jibe and raised his voice for Gregory’s ears. “Start the advance, Sub-Marshal.”

  The baron motioned toward the signalman, who promptly raised his horn and blew a short series of notes. First Division began moving forward in a narrow line, and Janice went with them, just a few horses behind the very lead. Will and the others waited behind. It would be almost half an hour before the middle, their portion of the column, would pass, at which time they’d begin to move as well.

  “Seems like a lot of effort for one section of the road,” remarked Laina when they finally were able to move. Burke and Emory had already left, moving with a slightly earlier portion of the column. “Are you sure it’s necessary?”

  “I hope it isn’t,” said Will. “But if they’ve rigged up some way to collapse part of the hillside onto us, we could lose hundreds of soldiers and weeks clearing the road or retracing our steps. The risk is too great to ignore. This is the best solution I could come up with.” He watched as the companies marched by, a sorcerer on either side of the line, spaced out at intervals of fifty yards.

  Eventually the first half of First Division was past, and Will and Laina took their places on either side of the marching soldiers. “Don’t worry,” called Laina from the other side. “Janice and the lead company should be at the end of the narrow part by now. If there was a trap or an ambush, they’d have tripped it by now.” She smiled reassuringly at him then absently pushed back a strand of golden hair that had escaped from her helm.

  They’d only ridden a few dozen feet when a deep rumble shivered through the ground. Something had happened ahead. Already looking at his sister, Will saw Laina’s expression shift from smile to worried frown as she felt the vibration run from the ground, through her horse, and into her chest. Vividly he saw the sun reflecting from her helm as her eyes turned to him, and then something slammed into his back and the world went black.

  Will found himself tumbling through the air as his horse suddenly disappeared from beneath him. The air changed from black to brown as dirt and soil rained down around him and sunlight began to penetrate the thick cloud of earth. Then the ground made itself known as Will landed on his right shoulder. There’d been a sound, he was fairly certain of that, but he couldn’t hear anything over the loud buzzing in his ears. The air continued to vibrate in his chest, and the earth under his back was rumbling.

  Somehow, he got back to his feet, though his balance seemed to be off and nothing made sense. Something blew up, said a quiet voice in his head, and the continued rumbling is probably a rockslide. He felt something fall on his shoulder, and when he glanced down, he saw a streak of red on his breastplate as someone’s hand tumbled away from him and fell to the ground. In the back of his mind he noted that it wasn’t a woman’s hand, so it was probably from one of the soldiers. Laina! Fear finally made itself known as he realized his half-sister might well be scattered across the nearby terrain.

  Summoning up the turyn within, Will opened his mouth and shouted, amplifying his voice instinctively, “Force-walls up!” His voice seemed strangely muted, but he could feel the power of it as his command rang out. He only hoped some of the others could still hear well enough to react to his order.

  Dirt and pebbles continued to rain down around him for several seconds while a helpful breeze pushed some of the dust cloud away so Will could see. Dark shapes covered the roadway, shapes that turned out to be men and horses. They’d been tossed up haphazardly and dropped in random piles. Many were dead, but worse still were those that hadn’t finished dying yet. As his hearing began to return, his ears were flooded with the cries of men and horses, some missing limbs, while others had been pierced or had their bones broken by a variety of jagged stones.

  A shallow crater stood in the road, just between where Will and Laina had been riding on either side of the column. Of the soldiers who had been standing there, none had survived. Will scrambled across, searching for his sister while simultaneously yelling orders that were probably useless. “Ware the hills! Find the wounded! Where is the sub-marshal?” His voice seemed to act almost independently, while his eyes scanned the ground for a piebald mare and a woman in mail. He found her bodyguard, Darla, first, unconscious but without serious visible injury, other than a large lump on her head. The Arkeshi’s horse was missing, probably a good sign, since it meant the beast had probably lived.

  Seconds later he spotted Laina’s piebald mare lying on the roadside. A portion of the horse’s neck was missing, torn away by whatever rock had gone through. Where is Laina? As he circled the dead horse, he saw her helm, gold hair sticking out from the fringes. She was under the mare. No, no, no…

  A mixture of relief and simultaneous horror passed over him when her head turned, and her eyes found his. She’s alive! He guessed she was still in shock, but the weight of the horse had to be crushing the life out of her, not to mention whatever other injuries he couldn’t see yet. “Someone get over here! Help me move this horse!” he yelled, but it was a fruitless order. Everyone nearby was in bad shape or still beginning to sort out what had happened, and even if there had been people close by, he couldn’t imagine how they would move a dead horse quickly enough to save her.

  Thoughts of using the grave-digging spell to excavate the ground beneath her ran through his head, bu
t his body was already moving. Even as he continued to formulate and discard plans, his hands took hold of the mare’s legs and he began trying to lift and roll the massive pile of dead equine flesh. To his surprise, it moved slightly, giving him hope, so he channeled his turyn into his muscles and worked harder. The ground seemed to favor him since it sloped away in the direction he was trying to move the animal. Will felt a strange popping sensation in his ribs and back, but the horse moved, and soon he was able to drag Laina away from the beast.

  Blood ran from her lips, but her body seemed to be in one piece, without holes or missing limbs. Laina’s ribs had almost certainly been broken, but she still breathed. Wasting no time, he summoned a regeneration potion from the limnthal and poured the foul fluid between her lips. He wasn’t sure if she could swallow properly, but he knew from experience that even if she choked, the potion would do vastly more good than harm.

  Someone tapped his arm, and Will looked over to see the sub-marshal beside him. “Will she live?” The young baron’s eyes were showing a lot of white and the man had a wildness in his expression.

  “I believe so,” said Will. “What’s the rest of the column look like?”

  “There were more explosions like this one, spaced out along the road. I can see three from here, but they may go all the way to the end for all we know.”

  “Get a messenger on a horse and send them ahead. We need to know!” barked Will, but then another thought came to him. He glanced at Laina, then back to the sub-marshal. “Find someone to watch over her. She’s healing, but she probably won’t wake up for hours.” Then he put together the spell construct for his elemental travel-disk and pushed some turyn into it. He felt even less drain on his turyn than usual, and it was then that he noticed his breastplate shifting colors. A moment before, it had been a shimmering black, on the verge of bursting into ebon flames, but now it faded to a more sedate shadowy matte hue. It must be easier to replace my turyn when I have a concentrated source close to me, he mused.

  Pushing that thought aside, he stepped onto the travel-disk and shot away, speeding downhill over the heads of his still recovering soldiers. It was quickly apparent that Gregory had been right, there were small craters spaced every fifty yards or so along the road. Those who had been directly over one of the explosions suffered badly, while those at moderate distances had merely been stunned and bewildered.

  Several hundred yards down the road, he found the source of the continued rumbling. A landslide had indeed been started, whether deliberately or as a result of the explosions on the road he couldn’t say. It had swept down along more than a hundred yards of the road on the right-hand side, and it probably would have swept a sizeable portion of First Division away but for the force-walls holding it at bay. Will felt a sense of pride and satisfaction seeing his students perform so well, but he had no time to indulge himself in his feelings.

  A few of the sorcerers had been killed by the explosions, and in a couple of places the rockslide had been allowed to sweep through, killing those unlucky enough to be caught in it. The rock and earth was settling against the force-walls, and while it had lost its momentum releasing the spells would still result in some trouble depending on how much earth and stone had piled up against them. Will noticed one sorcerer from the left-hand side using his earth elemental to fuse and stabilize the broken detritus so his fellow sorcerer could release his spell.

  It was an excellent idea, and one that needed to be shared. “Those who are free, if you have an earth elemental, help stabilize things so the others can release their force-walls,” he bellowed, amplifying his voice. The temperature dropped, and a chilly wind followed in the wake of his announcement. Coincidence? Or a side effect of my sound manipulation? Every day he had more questions.

  Seeing that the situation was improving, Will continued on, until he reached the head of the column. A large crater there indicated an even larger explosion, and he saw bodies and horses scattered around it like broken dolls. From above it looked surreal, but he knew he wasn’t dreaming.

  Scanning the area with his eyes, he saw no sign of enemy forces, so he descended and found Janice in the midst of the carnage, alive and unhurt. She was already organizing the other survivors, but there was obvious relief in her eyes when she saw him descend. “How bad is it further along?” she asked as soon as he was within earshot.

  “Not as bad as this, but similar, every fifty yards, all the way back to the beginning of the narrow section,” he replied. “Were you farther back when it went off?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “There was a man in the road. I rode forward with two squads. It seemed like he wanted to parley.” She paused and Will could see survivor’s guilt written on her face as she looked over at the bodies around the crater. “When we were almost to him, he pulled out a sheet of parchment and I saw the runes glowing on it. I didn’t have time to think. I put a force-dome around myself, but everyone else…” Her voice tapered off.

  “You did the only thing you could,” he told her, knowing it was cold comfort.

  Things got chaotic after that. Will returned to the middle of the column, where the sub-marshal had reestablished some semblance of order. The dead were counted and lined up, while the wounded were identified and given preliminary treatment until they could be moved back down the line. The supply camp that followed behind Sixth Division contained a sizeable medical group for just that purpose.

  Thanks to the efforts of Will’s sorcerers, most of the road was still clear and their elementals were able to rapidly clean up the small sections that had been covered with rocks and to fill in the craters that would impede wagon travel.

  The First was delayed by almost two hours, but it began moving again, though it was slightly smaller. They’d lost two hundred and seventy-two men, and close to three hundred more had been badly wounded. It was their first taste of war, and First Division was already down by a tenth of its soldiers.

  Will had intended to march for several more hours after getting by the narrow section of road, but they stopped early, moving into an area of wide empty land and making camp. First needed time to bury its dead, while the wounded would be sent back, their part in the war already done. That was the grim reality that few thought about when it came to supply lines. An open supply line wasn’t just a channel for food and supplies to flow to an army, it was also a channel for the wounded to be transported back home.

  It was also soon apparent that Will’s own body hadn’t escaped unharmed. While the breastplate had protected him from whatever had struck his chest, he had apparently hurt himself after the explosion. Roughly an hour after the first shock, he found himself nearly unable to move—his back was in agony. It took him several minutes of reflection before he connected his current pain to what he had done to move the dead horse. Although he loathed to do so, he was forced to use yet another of his precious regeneration potions; otherwise he might have been incapacitated for days or weeks.

  He had some empty time while camp was being set up and before the other senior officers arrived for the inevitable evening meeting regarding the day’s disaster, so he used the time for a short nap to recuperate his energy after the potion. An hour later he awoke feeling much better, so he activated the limnthal and shared his news with Arrogan.

  When he had finished describing things, his mentor’s first question was about the explosions. “Do you know if they used spell-bombs or alchemy?”

  “Janice saw someone use an activation enchantment before everything blew up, but that doesn’t mean anything,” answered Will. He knew about the alchemical possibility from his studies, and he’d read about spell-bombs in the military histories, though he knew nothing of how they were constructed. “It could have been alchemical blasting powder or enchanted spell-bombs. Is there a way to tell, and does it make a practical difference?”

  “For what they did, there’s not much functional difference, but knowing what method they used will give you a better idea of what they might be c
apable of in the future. Blasting powder is versatile and easier to produce, but the strength of the explosion is limited. Spell-bombs can get much, much worse than what you described, but they require a lot of time and skill to produce. If that’s what it was then your enemy may have a lot more magical support than you anticipate.”

  Will frowned, rubbing his chin. “From the intelligence reports I’ve seen, Darrow’s pool of available sorcerers has been slowly dwindling over the last few decades, possibly longer, which probably means that unlike Terabinia they haven’t had a source of new elementals. It might even be part of the reason they attacked a few years ago; if they realized their position would steadily erode over time, they might have wanted to gamble while they were still strong enough to have a decent chance of winning.”

  “That’s good,” replied Arrogan. “I’ve been worried that Lognion might not be the only one who managed to find or revive the secret of the heart-stone enchantment. But if he is the only one who has it then it makes sense that Terabinia has been steadily growing in power while Darrow dwindles.”

  “Is there a way to know if it was powder or spell-bombs?” said Will, repeating his earlier question.

  “Blasting powder has a distinctive smell that’s easy to recognize if you’ve dealt with it before.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Consult the other students. One of them might have some experience with it. If not, some of your officers might be able to tell you.”

  Will grimaced. “I’d rather know before the officers meeting. They already think I’m too inexperienced for the job.”

  “No one knows everything,” argued his old teacher. “Besides, I didn’t necessarily mean the senior officers. Ask among the lieutenants and captains. There’s a lot more of them, and rank doesn’t necessarily automatically confer greater knowledge or experience. Hell, if they don’t know, ask the sergeants. That’s where you’ll find the most experience in any army.”