“I see what you mean.”
“So, I’m stuck with my original plan,” said Will.
“Don’t be so gloomy. Inspiration will strike when it’s needed. You know what they say, desperation is the mother of annihilation.”
Will chuckled. “I think you got it wrong. The saying goes ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’”
“Yeah. That works too. Doesn’t roll off the tongue as smoothly, though.”
“I guess I’d better get up and get moving,” said Will reluctantly.
Arrogan wasn’t quite done, though. “Wait. You didn’t quite get it right when I asked my question about limitations a minute ago. A better answer would be that the limiting factor is the amount of available turyn.”
“I can only absorb so much.”
“Not yours, idiot. Remember what you said about casting your voice across an entire city? You didn’t do that with your personal turyn.”
“Oh.” Will thought about it for a moment. “But I don’t have any control over the amount of ambient turyn in the environment. It varies somewhat, but it seems mostly random within a certain range.”
“Surely you’ve fought some enemy sorcerers by now?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“What was the thing that scared you most?”
Will was truly confused. “Dying?”
The ring let out a sigh of long-suffering. “And what did you think would kill you?”
“The enemy?”
“Gah! It’s going to be me if you don’t start answering properly! How did you think they could kill you? What was the biggest threat to your immediate wellbeing?”
“At Maldon it was probably someone dropping a big rock on my head. Of course, I did that for them in the end.”
“Exactly.”
Will felt he’d been doing well for a while, but now he seemed to have completely missed the point. “I don’t follow you.”
“You weren’t scared of their magic. Remember how I died?”
That was a particularly traumatic memory for Will. “How could I forget? You were shot with a crossbow.”
“Now you know what to be afraid of, but more importantly, you should also know what you never need fear again. Right?”
“What’s that?”
“Magic, you clod-headed-dolt!”
“Ahh.” Will turned the idea over in his head a few times then replied, “That master vampire wizard nearly turned me inside out.”
“With magic?”
Now that he thought about it, no. Alexander had made himself largely immune to Will’s attacks and then relied on his superior strength and speed to mangle him. “I guess not.”
“Now you’re starting to see the light. You’ve come into your power. You still have some maturing and a lot of growth ahead, but the one thing you really shouldn’t ever have to fear is magic.”
He frowned. “Not even if I meet a stronger wizard?”
“You already did,” pointed out his grandfather. “You could be outmaneuvered or tricked, but other than a force spell from behind, no one is going to be able to kill you with magic.”
That made some sense to him. A force spell couldn’t be manipulated or stolen by an opposing caster, since it was in some way an extension of one’s self. Other magic users would have varying degrees of control over magic as the distance increased from their bodies, but unless they were insanely strong, Will would almost certainly have greater control over any turyn close to his body.
“Unless they use their magic to smash my head open with a rock,” suggested Will.
“That sort of falls into the earlier category, crossbows and such,” said Arrogan. “I’m talking about pure magic.”
Something else occurred to him. “What about a demon-lord?”
“Pardon?”
“The goddamn cat told me I might have a demon-lord to deal with later. Does what you said hold true of them too?”
Arrogan went silent for a bit, then replied, “You’re a wizard. Magic belongs to you. Sorcerers, warlocks, demons, I don’t care who they are or what they are, they’re merely dabbling, borrowing powers that they don’t truly own. Don’t forget that. Now, a demon-lord, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I doubt one could hurt you directly with magic, but most of them have been alive for eons. He’s going to have the edge, in control and will. Add to that the fact that his turyn reserves are similar to those of a mountain, that they regenerate from nearly any wound, and that they’re stronger than a troll…”
“That doesn’t sound very encouraging.”
“You might be able to spit in his eye before he rips your heart out and eats it, but look on the bright side. He’ll probably have to use his actual hands to do it, rather than a spell.”
Will blanched at the thought. “So what do you recommend?”
“Avoid them like the plague. You did well with that one before, but unless you’ve got a being on your side who can fight one of them evenly, like the goddamn cat—you should run.”
He thought about the ethereal spell he had learned. “If I had to hide, would slipping into the ethereal work?”
“For a second maybe. They can’t cross into our world without help, but they’re masters of manipulating the proximal planes,” said Arrogan.
“Proximal planes?”
“Mainly the ethereal, and in some circumstances the astral. There’s only one astral plane, remember, but every primary plane like ours has its own complementary ethereal plane. Some demons can slip back and forth between the plane they are on and the proximal ethereal almost as easily as you and I breathe air. A demon-lord is almost guaranteed to be proficient at moving to and from the ethereal plane.”
Someone entered the tent to wake him up, so Will dismissed the limnthal and rose from his cot. It was time to get started.
Chapter 46
Fulstrom almost balked when Will explained that he needed the men to form up in preparation to face the Darrowans that had been pushing them for the past two days. “Did I mishear?” asked the sub-marshal.
Will shook his head. “No, I’m genuinely crazy.” He stopped there and enjoyed the spectacle of the young lord trying to decide how to respond. Lustral’s fate was probably still fresh on the officer’s mind. After a second, he took pity and explained, “We’re not actually going to fight them. It’s just a show for their scouts.”
The sub-marshal nodded. “So, what are we going to do?”
“Let’s get Subcommander Terrell over here, as well as the junior officers. Most of it will be simply waiting, but when we do spring into action, we are going to need considerable coordination.”
After that, Will found a few minutes of privacy to check on Janice and Tiny once again. Janice and the relief forces were still on the move, while Tiny was still in the same place. Studying the ground in front of his friend, Will could see that it had been scraped clear of leaves and debris. In relatively clear letters, Tiny had written a short note in the dirt, “I think I might have been wrong.”
“Damn right you were,” muttered Will when he had returned to his body. Pushing that thought aside, he considered what he’d seen of Janice’s whereabouts. He hadn’t exactly memorized the road while they traveled, but if she was in the area he thought she was, then the relief would arrive sometime in the early afternoon. They might not be as early as he had hoped, but they would be there.
He stretched and stepped outside, then walked to the edge of camp. It was time to get to work. He discovered his first problem almost immediately. The road to the east rose and fell, limiting the distance he could see. The enemy still wasn’t visible, though they had camped barely two miles away. Technically his magic would work anyway, but he preferred to have a clear mental picture of the area he was affecting.
The sky had brightened, though the sun was still beneath the horizon. The early scouts had reported no movement yet, so his plan was probably still viable. Will constructed an elemental travel-disk and lifted himself as high as he could manage to get a
better view.
The spell wasn’t meant for flying, so he could only lift himself around ten yards above the ground, but that was enough to give him the view he needed. The Darrowans appeared to be forming up already, though they hadn’t moved yet.
“We’ll see what they do when they realize that our reserves are already behind them,” said Will softly. Sifting through the memories of his days in the army, he found the sounds he wanted: men on the move, their voices rough and ready as they cajoled one another, horns in the distance, the stomping of thousands of feet, and the creak of leather and metal harnesses. He gathered those sounds within his mind and then he sent them out to ride the currents. The enemy is behind you, thought Will, as he brought the ambient turyn under his control.
The sounds were clear enough that they carried all the way back to the Terabinian camp, and Will saw the men looking at one another with questions in their eyes, wondering what was happening. He watched the Darrowans, and though nothing happened at first, after a minute they began sounding horns. The forward line broke apart as units were ordered to take different positions.
Will smiled. He felt sure that would cost them an hour or two, and possibly much more. The enemy commander would doubtless be sending new scouts out in every direction. The Darrowans would need to confirm that the Terabinians were still where they were supposed to be, and that an unforeseen force hadn’t snuck up behind them.
He kept up the phantom army sounds for half an hour before resting. He’d felt some strain, but even though the wild magic had involved relatively vast amounts of environmental turyn, Will was only modestly fatigued. Given fifteen or twenty minutes to recuperate, and he thought he would be close to his optimum strength again. Again, it wasn’t a direct drain on his personal turyn. That was the limiting factor for sorcerers, their elementals, and most other magic users. For him it was mainly the exercise of his will, and the fatigue it produced was purely mental, the same sort of fatigue one might feel after studying for hours.
It was no less real, though. He knew that from his two previous experiences when he’d injured his will by overdoing things. His will was a lot stronger these days, however, and he didn’t feel as though he’d pushed himself very much yet.
The morning passed with agonizing slowness. While the soldiers pretended to be readying for war, they mainly rested in place. Every hour Will took a break to check on the progress and location of his friends, and whenever the enemy looked to be preparing again to advance on them, he would start another round of phantom sounds to disturb them once more.
He was certain it had to be absolutely nerve-wracking for the enemy commander. As soon as they’d gotten an all-clear back from their scouts, Will would begin a new set of entirely too realistic noises to convince them they were being flanked.
As the morning stretched out, word passed along the line, as the officers explained to the men exactly what was happening. They could hear the sounds too, and obviously it wasn’t in anyone’s best interest if Will’s deceptive noises rattled the Terabinian soldiers as well.
The explanation had an unexpected effect, though. First and Third Divisions had been on the run for two days and their morale had suffered badly, but now they could audibly hear what Will was doing to the enemy. Their imaginations were captured as they thought about the nervousness and uncertainty that must be afflicting those who had harried them. During Will’s third round of deception, the Terabinian soldiers responded with a guttural war chant. It wasn’t a formal song or chant with words, merely a primal ‘hu-hu-hu,’ followed by a stomping of feet.
Inspired, Will copied them and soon his illusory army was engaged in a call and response with the real, living and breathing Terabinians that stood beside him. The poor Darrowans caught in the middle of it were probably sweating buckets by then. Their formation had tightened into two defensive lines, on either side, defending against both their real foes and the ones they couldn’t see.
Midday came and went, and Will began to wish he had some way to truly hurt the enemy. He was getting an ever better feel for what he could and couldn’t do as he repeated his tactics over and over. Creating sounds that would be painful or deafening was definitely possible, but he simply didn’t have the concentrated turyn necessary to do so. His own personal energies were a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what lay in the air and ground around them, but that turyn was too diffuse, too spread out, to be used offensively.
Despite what Arrogan had said, he didn’t think there was a practical way to make his talent destructive. But obviously it has a lot of potential as a distraction, he admitted silently.
Eventually the Darrowans decided to ignore the sounds, and as they reordered their lines, Will did one last check on Janice and Tiny. Tiny was no longer where he had been. Instead, he was standing by Captain Barrentine, as the knight looked over Thunderturnip. Janice appeared to be with Emory and Bug, giving instructions to a gathering of the sorcerer-soldiers.
Will returned to his own body, wishing he could send his voice far enough to signal his friends. They were roughly twice as far away as his simulated army had been, a distance of six or seven miles. Although he thought the distance might be doable, he had no way of targeting them closely.
He’d just have to make sure they heard something when the time came. That time appeared to be just minutes away. Will turned to Subcommander Terrell and nodded. “Give the orders.”
Seconds later, horns sounded, and sergeants began yelling up and down the line. The men of First and Third Divisions straightened up, then abruptly turned to face right. In mere seconds, the long shield wall facing the Darrowans transformed into part of a column marching directly south, perpendicular to the direction their foes would be approaching from. Though the Darrowan units were also beginning to move, they still had more than half a mile of ground to cover.
Will’s army marched into the rougher terrain to the south of the road, not because they thought they could avoid the enemy, but rather because he knew the Shimerans were planning to hit them from the south if they simply followed the road west. By marching into the semi-wooded area, they could turn east after a short march and come directly at the mercenaries who were planning to ambush them.
If things went to plan, then the Second and Sixth would be moving along a similar course to meet them—with the Shimerans caught in between. Will made a small effort to amplify the sound of their horns, alerting their allies, and probably the Shimerans as well.
Of course, the fly in the ointment was the large Darrowan army following them. Timing would be key; otherwise, they’d be the ones being ground down in the middle, rather than the reverse. Will briefly tried another round of auditory distractions, but the Darrowans continued to head straight for them, shifting to march on a diagonal to adjust for the Terabinians’ new route.
They won’t be able to close on us quickly enough, unless they switch to a charge. At least that’s what Will hoped. A half mile was too far for a sensible charge. The enemy would risk losing cohesion and organization. The Terabinians could easily close ranks, and turn to face them in tight formation. It might still be a win for the Darrowans, but it would be a costly one, even if the mercenaries then moved up to attack their flanks. They won’t risk it, Will reassured himself. We aren’t following their plan, but as long as we keep moving toward the Shimerans, they know we face disaster. They’ll wait, so they can spring the trap when it’s most effective.
They finished their southerly march and then switched formation again, turning to face eastward. The shield men moved through the other lines, and the spearmen, skirmishers, and reserves fell into position behind them. Horns blew and orders rang out, “First and Third, double-time march! Shields up, spears at the ready!”
Will couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride at the precision and cohesion of their lines. The soldiers of the First had recently taken a terrible beating. Nearly half their number were gone, as many of those with non-fatal wounds had been lost while fighting to escape t
he Darrowans. The Third was in better shape, but their losses would still be considered a devastating blow in any normal world.
They’d been to hell and back, and now they were quick stepping through brambles and small trees to meet those who had meant to ambush them face-to-face. As he saw it all, Will’s heart surged in his chest and he couldn’t help but encourage them. Lifting his head to the sky, he sang out loudly, letting his magic carry the words out for all the world to hear, “March for glory, brothers! Live or die, we’ll make sure they never forget we were here!”
A shout echoed back from the lines, and the Terabinians began moving even faster, though they remained in step and in line. Will held out some hope that an answering shout might come from ahead, a response from the Second and Sixth, but his ear heard nothing in that direction. Even the Shimerans remained hidden, crouched in a low region where the ground dipped slightly. They wouldn’t be able to remain hidden, for they would be easily spotted at a hundred yards or so, but it was enough to be devastating for an unsuspecting opponent. Will hoped they didn’t realize their position was actually known.
As they marched, breaks occurred here and there, when trees or other obstacles intervened, but they quickly closed as soon as the soldiers passed them. Looking over his shoulder, Will could see that the Darrowan divisions had sped up considerably. As he watched, they went from a similar pace to an outright charge, trying to close the distance just before Will and his soldiers ran up against the unseen Shimerans.
He grinned. They were too late. There was still a third of a mile between them.
And then things went to shit, as another demon-fueled illusion dissipated, and Will saw what really lay in front of them.
A line of heavily armored men rose up from the tall grass, less than thirty yards ahead of the Terabinian line. The Shimerans had shifted their position during the night. Will’s mind shot into high gear as the world seemed to slow around him.
Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4) Page 41
