Battle Mage: Winter's Edge

by Donald Wigboldy

  Karma was about to retort when a leather, armored slave came running into the courtyard in front of the barracks and training building. "They're here!" he shouted franticly.

  Smoke could be seen rising into the air to the south of the farm. "They're burning our fields," Karma snarled. "All right, men, let's go show these animals how the Holteins deal with Tolmonan mongrels." The young man strutted off to do battle with his guardsmen to either side. The slaves all followed after their master as a group though much less confidently.

  Gerid walked along towards the rear of the defenders with Leoltus, Baitram, Jatan and Mateil. A rush of nervous tension began to charge him as he readied for combat. The other men seemed to watch him from either side even as they watched for the enemy to appear. Even as Gerid noticed that, they seemed to move slightly closer to him. He figured that his plans for getting noticed here had definitely come to fruition though perhaps Karma would rather that he could forget him instead this time. Maybe, Gerid thought, he would have to do something even more drastic in the future. If he didn't get killed, the slave just might win over the temperamental young master.

  With extra strength set in his stride, Gerid began to move towards the front lines.

  "Boy, what are you doing?" Leoltus questioned in a hiss trying to keep his voice lowered. "Are you planning suicide?"

  Gerid turned a brief glance at the older man with a tight lipped smile and dangerous eyes. "You others may want to get back from me now, Leoltus. I plan to draw enough of the bandits away from the rest of these slaves that maybe I can keep most of them alive. You can join me, but maybe you should help the others and lead them through this. The others aren't warriors at all. They're just farmers and herdsmen. They will need your leadership now more than ever."

  "You do talk like you're going to the slaughter, boy. Stick with the plan and we can work together after the others take the first charge. Are you going to throw your life away so quickly?" He lowered his voice again and asked, "What about your Tabitha?"

  Gerid ignored him and quickly moved through the ragged ranks. The slaves noticed him and several whispered to themselves at his bold gesture. He hoped that they would even gain a little more strength from his confident attitude though his own stomach was beginning to flutter slightly.

  As he found his place several feet behind Karma, they spied their adversaries. Several horsemen in black with red dyed faces carried torches in one hand and an upraised sword in the other. They seemed to guide their mounts with their knees rather than their hands, a hard trick Gerid noted. Just behind them, a small horde of similarly adorned men with swords and shields in hand made their way through the small fires just beginning to rise around them.

  The sight of Karma's force caused the riders to give voice to blood curdling war cries. Gerid had never fought a man on horseback before even in practice, but, instead of holding back, he answered their cries with a shout and leapt forward. Karma turned and made to restrain his exuberance, but Gerid dodged his outstretched arm and was quickly running past the three.

  Two horsemen led the way grinning at him. Hoping to drain the momentum of the charging bandits and praying that he would survive such an act, Gerid's mind calculated the moves that would be required as he ran forward. Ducking beneath their swords and deflecting one blade with the long knife, Gerid deftly grabbed hold of the bandit on his right. Using his great strength, he twisted the man completely off of his mount. Quickly using both hands, he flung the man far enough to remove the third rider from his seat with a loud thump and crash of mail armor. Both men fell to the ground only to have their companions trample them to death before they could adjust to those newly fallen.

  One horseman's steed tripped as a result and threw the rider towards Gerid. Lashing out with the long knife, blood sprayed over his hand and legs as he tore a long, ragged, red trench through the man's torso. Quickly retrieving his club from where he had dropped it to grab the rider, Gerid allowed his adrenaline to force the bloody image of the man from his mind. A righteous rage consumed him instead in its place as the young man fought to rid the land of the bandit scourge. He charged deeper into the enemy ranks without hesitating.

  Time nearly stopped for Gerid in the chaos of battle. His club continued to rise and fall as new opponents leapt to try and stop this demon unleashed in their midst. The long knife drew blood by the gallon and met steel with the power of a normal man's sword until it could no longer sustain its master's fury.

  In a red, hazy fog, a sword was found to replace the knife even as the club too began to come apart in his hand. It was only wood after all and, though Gerid used it like the mightiest oak to punish the shields and armor around him, it could not be what it was not. A strong warrior with a stout shield of blackened steel met his attack in its final moments. Three devastating blows to the metal and the club exploded into slivers of shrapnel. The warrior laughed and tried to capitalize on the loss of the weapon. He charged forward with shield raised and sword readied to strike. Twisting nimbly, Gerid wrenched the defensive metal and thrust it back into the man. The sword was shoved to the side as Gerid swung his blade decapitating the warrior.

  Taking only a second to retrieve the bandit's sword and to strap the brave shield onto his back, Gerid surveyed the battle still around him. There were bodies strewn all around him, but no man stood ready to meet him this time. Instead, the battle had swept to either side of him. Men screamed to his right where a group of slaves fought wildly to preserve their lives against a superior force. The left revealed Karma leading nearly a dozen men, including Leoltus and the guardsmen. They were fighting well enough he quickly decided.

  With a roar of defiance, the berserker charged to the aid of the slaves. Even over the clashes of metal and the screams of injured men, the Tolmonan bandits heard the cry and trembled. Several turned as one group from the slaves to meet him. He could see fear in most of their eyes now. As the giant quickly split two men in twain with the new blade, those who had not been fearful, became so immediately.

  Voran: The Night Guardian

  Chapter 1- Guardian

  The city, never fully asleep, always imbued with its own sound, quiets momentarily and only the sound of the wind whistling through metal and brick ways stands out. A sliver of the moon gives light in places, but doesn’t penetrate the alleys where monsters prey on the innocent. Stories of wild dogs and coyotes made the news, but it was often a different predator that would not come into the light that was most dangerous.

  A woman’s voice cries out weakly.

  A green bulb changes and the sounds of nearby cars drown out another sound, the sound of flesh tearing and blood dripping to the ground where it escapes the mouth of the predator.

  The woman’s voice continues to call for help, but her strength is fading and her sounds seem to go unheard. The creature continues to draw out her blood, feasting. It has done this before, though he is still young and new to the feeding to sate his hunger. The predator that was once a man is now merely a vessel of desire for the only food that will stop his hunger, if only for awhile. The woman’s head lolls to the side, her energy spent as her life begins to fade.

  The scuff from the roof top above draws the predator’s attention, though human ears could not have heard the faint sounds from nearly thirty feet away. The creature no longer needs to hunt, but he will not leave a witness to his deed. Still dripping blood from his chin, the creature leaps high upon the near wall and bounds from it across the alley to the far wall. A third leap brings it to the lip of the building and the creature searches for the source of the sound.

  Night vision picking out heat sources, the creature quickly finds the man. The voyeur is calm. The murder and the monster which created it bring no fear or seemingly any emotion from the man. The creature should have wondered at such a thing, but its bloodlust clouded judgment. The man must die, it thinks and no other option presents itself.

  Leaping forward to attack, the predator’s claws search for the man’s throat.
It will rip the life from his body, or so it thinks, but as its claws slice the air before its target, the man moves with amazing speed side stepping the killing blow.

  The predator feels pain from the side of its chest.

  Glancing down, the creature sees blood dripping and bands of flesh and cloth swaying as it turns to face the man. Confusion etches it features. The mouth opens revealing extended incisors. The eyes are all white save its irises. Ears, nearly pointed, are oversized and acute of hearing. It hears the man’s heartbeat thrumming steadily.

  It looks at the man more closely. Reason begins to override bloodlust and the creature notes four ivory claws dripping with his blood. Virtually gleaming white even in the wane moonlight, the claws extend unnaturally from the man’s right hand. There is a glint of steel from the man’s side. A sword rests upon his hip where the moon catches the metal hilt revealing the blade still sheathed.

  Arrogance in the predator’s strengths, well beyond human now, convince it to attack again. It is a mistake. The clawed hand swipes across its chest tearing through bone and flesh alike. A back swing, as the predator stumbles back in shock, removes the head at the neck.

  The heart is bared. It thumps, even as the body falls to its knees. The man calmly stabs the claws through a black diseased looking heart. Pierced, the heart stops and begins to burn. As the man steps back withdrawing his claws, the torso catches flame and soon the whole body is afire.

  Knowing the creature is dead, the man steps to the edge of the building above the site of the kill. With a vampire’s corpse behind him, the man knows that the story may not be over. He jumps over the edge, but instead of injuring himself thirty feet below; the man seems to slow his fall. At half the speed he should be falling, the man touches down without harm.

  He checks the woman and finds a ragged pulse. Taking a dagger from another sheath, the man cuts his hand and places it over the wound in the woman’s neck. His blood enters her wound. With a cry of pain, the woman wrenches her body from the pavement with a quick jolt. The wound seems to burn, though not the way of the vampire. The torn skin cauterizes and heals as if there has been no attack.

  Falling back towards the alleyway floor, the woman fades back towards unconsciousness. The man catches the woman as she collapses backward. Checking her pulse again, he finds her heart strengthening. Apparently out of danger, the man pulls out his cell phone.

  “Marek,” he states, “there’s a little clean up for you.”

  It is not long before they come. The man, with his claws now hidden, waits for them on the roof. The vampire’s head sits on a furnace cap near the body’s remains. Burned near to ash, there is little left of the body and even much of its clothes are reduced to char. The man had found a wallet mostly intact. As the quartet leaps onto the building from the darkness, the man’s wallet is thrown to the leader.

  “Recognize him?” the first man asks before the others can barely slow themselves in front of the ash.

  “Leonard Newton? No, I can’t say that I do,” the man’s English holds the trace of something eastern European, but it is only slight. Years of practice have removed much of it since the two had met so long ago.

  The monster slayer points to the head. “Someone in your clan may recognize him. He seems only recently changed, maybe someone didn’t finish a kill? You know your people can call me so we can avoid this sort of thing, Marek?”

  “Of course they do, Nicholas,” he pauses, “if that is the name you still go by today.”

  The man addressed as Nicholas smiles a half hearted glance in recognition of the attempted joke. “It is for now, yes.” Quickly returning to the matter at hand, he adds, “Do you think we have someone new moving into the territory? Maybe he’s just some loaner wandering in off the train or something?”

  Marek shakes his head as he offers the wallet as evidence. “Chicago. He lives less than half a mile from here. If there’s someone new converting people, my crew hasn’t brought them to my attention.”

  Nodding in answer, Nicholas responds, “Alert them to keep watch. We can’t afford to have someone creating feral spawn and leaving them to cause a mess we can’t hide. We’ve worked too long to keep your people out of the media to have some careless vampire exposing us now.”

  The others nod.

  A moment’s thought brings a new question from the vampire slayer. “How is your stores of the blood holding up?”

  “The clan should be fine with what we have for a month.”

  “Good. I part with it to avoid this sort of thing.

  “Did you bring a car or just fly over? There’s a woman down below that can be brought to a hospital.”

  Marek nods. “Of course, we did. You said there was clean up. Jake parked a street north just in case. We can get her and the remains removed. I assume that you treated her in time?”

  Sniffing in mock arrogance, Nick replies, “Don’t I always?”

  A slight chuckle from the group precedes Marek’s friendly retort, “Well, you are getting older, voran. If you were just a human, you would be dust, so it’s understandable that you might start to forget things.”

  “Humph, you better hope that I don’t get so old that I forget we’re friends, you silly old bat. I still remember the day I decided to spare the scrawny yearling hiding from its sire. As long as I am around, we can maintain the peace. If I were getting too old, we’d have to find someone else willing to prolong it.”

  Marek sighs, “You are entirely too serious, my friend. We know your mentor still lives and she’s centuries older than you. Must you always head for the doom and gloom when we talk?

  “Come, Nicholas, the night is still young and beautiful. Smile and join us later for a run across the rooftops. We can even keep an eye out for more trouble, peace keeper. That way you can even feel that you’re making a serious attempt at remaining serious,” the man finishes with a chuckle.

  “Running with this lot will make me old before my time. You and your clan can play without me this time. Just make sure the woman gets to a hospital and make sure her memory is properly adjusted. There’s no sense sending the poor woman to an asylum on top of this.”

  The quartet laughs. “You’re almost showing a sense of humor, my friend, but we will accept your refusal this time. Soon we must get you out here with us. It’s fun. You might actually like fun.”

  Again the others laugh, but Nick is already cinching his long jacket tighter with his belt. It is getting colder even as winter was supposed to be relinquishing its hold. Some years Chicago just refused to let spring come and then it would skip to the heat of summer.

  With a last parting farewell, the man, known as a voran, moves off into the darkness.

  The Mermaid’s Chest

  The four friends jogged down the beach in the direction the boat and two girls had gone. Fighting the urge to run harder and knowing it would be futile if they did, the four hurried along the sand with its broken branches and washed up seaweed forcing them to keep an eye on where they placed their feet.

  “You don’t think she’d actually leave us behind for real?” Taylor gasped as she ran near the back of the group. She had never been overly athletic and preferred theater and music to running track, so she had avoided it since the first year of gym.

  Emily had firmer control of her breath since she swam and jogged quite often. Wanting to be a sports doctor in the future, the girl felt she should be an athlete as much as possible. Shaking her head Emily spoke loud enough for her friends to hear, “No, if I know her, she’ll figure to get just out of sight before turning around to get us, but then again Faith could let us wait for half an hour before doing it. When she pulls pranks, my little sister tends to go for maximum effect.”

  “I’m going to kill them both!” Katie snapped looking somewhere between Emily and Taylor for fitness as they jogged along the beach. “When I get my hands on her…

  “She has our food and water too. It’s not like she could have at least left us something.”
/>
  Phoebe tried to concentrate on where she placed her feet. Thankfully her friends back home had kept her somewhat active and her breathing was still fine. She still wondered why they were running. Faith would have to come back for them, wouldn’t she? There was no way that the girl would leave them stranded on an abandoned island without food or water.

  Even if Faith had a grudge against her sister, Phoebe couldn’t believe that the rest of them would need to be tortured as well, but she had to admit that she barely knew her younger cousin. The past few days the Australian had become close friends to Emily, Katie and Taylor with a lesser degree of time spent with the younger girls. Even so, that hardly meant she or any of the others should be left behind.

  Several minutes later as the girls neared a bend in the island’s shape, they spotted the boat drifting near the middle of the channel and the two girls moving frantically onboard.

  “Oh no,” Emily gasped, “she didn’t?”

  “Didn’t what?” the other girls seemed to answer in a chorus as their eyes went from Emily to the speedboat out on the water.

  Giving a groan and sweep her hands along her cheeks anxiously, the blond leading them answered, “I think she may have broken it!”

  A feeling of dread covered them all as they moved to the edge of the sand where the water rose and fell splashing across their bare feet. The four girls standing side by side watched as Faith broke out the paddles. It wasn’t an efficient endeavor and the waves would work against the boat making it that much slower.

  Emily stripped back to her swim suit. “I’m going to swim out and try to help them before they drift away.”

  Taylor joined her though the second girl wasn’t as strong a swimmer as the trim blond. Both girls pulled their hair back into tails that they tied with flex bands that had been on their wrists like bracelets. With hair out of their way, both girls waded in for several feet before they were up to their waists in the water.