“Captain, I’d never be so crude,” Mavone assured me in the smoothest of tones. “Might I ask just how you are ‘working’ for our valiant captain?”
“Not working for, working with,” I corrected. “She’s taken the Oath. I presented her a stone.”
“She’s a warmagi?” Curmor asked, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “Pretty little thing like that? I think I would have heard of her.”
“Shadowmage,” I corrected, after glancing at her for permission. “She specializes in finding things out. Overhearing, seeing things she isn’t supposed to see, and learning secrets. Spy magic.”
“How fascinating!” Mavone said, earnestly. “We must get together to exchange perspectives some time, perhaps this evening in my tent. I have a bottle of—”
“Enough, Mavone, you won’t have time for courting – or exchanging recipes – for a good long while, and Lady Isily isn’t interested, anyway.”
“So why you did you give her a stone?” Curmor asked, still confused. “Not that I wouldn’t be willing to part with one, if it would convince her to part—
“What my cousin means, milady,” Mavone said with his accustomed smoothness, “is that due to the current war effort, such things are precious. They should be reserved for competent warmagi.”
“It’s going to take more than warmagi to win this war,” I countered. “There will be a role for all sorts of magical folk. Including enchanted spies.”
“Enchanting spies, is more apt,” Mavone muttered, as he glanced at Isily meaningfully.
“Please, sir, don’t make me do something rash,” Isily said, with mock enthusiasm. “I am newly come into my witchstone and would hate to have my ‘incompetence’ accidentally grow you a few extra pairs of teats, for example.”
“I don’t know,” Mavone said, without hesitation. “Make ‘em big enough, and that might be a fun way to pass the time.”
As Isily rolled her eyes and contemplated homicide, an older man with a yellow cord around his neck bearing a brass key came up to me and gave me a perfunctory bow. “Are you the Spellmonger, my lord?” he asked.
“Just arrived,” I acknowledged. “I do hope these two haven’t been causing any problems—”
“No, my lord,” the harried-looking man said, without humor. “They were most helpful in instructing my lord Baron on the disposition of the enemy. No, my lord, I come because the Baron summoned you the moment you set foot in Green Hill. Come with me, please.”
My friends and I followed the castellan inside the inner bailey and across the dry clay yard toward the big double keep. Mavone and Curmor filled me in on the details of their scouting missions while we walked, and Mavone actually shut up about how beautiful Isily was enough to tell me not just about the goblin army threatening Tudry, but the other bands in the area and what people were doing about them. By the time I came to the huge wooden door of the eastern keep, I had a much better idea of what our local situation was like. Which was depressing, because it didn’t look positive.
Baron Magonas turned out to be a strong, vital-looking man wearing plain but well-made armor under a surcoat embroidered with his arms, his curly brown hair and beard spilling out from his chainmail coif like an over-full barrel. I found him in his central hall, standing with a group of his men around an expansive table holding a full deerskin hide that turned out to be a detailed map of the region.
The castellan introduced me to his lord and hurried away on a dozen other errands. I presented my credentials to Magonas and informed him I had three thousand troops with me. I was about to break it to him that I would be taking over the thousand mercenary cavalry he’d hired, but before I could, he slapped me on the back and acted like I was the answer to his prayers.
“I haven’t wanted to risk our defenses by going after the raiders,” he informed me. He put his mailed finger down decisively on the map, where a wooden block with the face of a goblin hastily painted on it loomed. “This band keeps skirmishing with my yeoman to the north,” he complained, showing me on the map where there had been fighting, indicated by little white smooth pebbles. “I’ve lost over twenty peasants to them, so far, and they stand between me and my northern fiefs. They evade any party scouting in force, and only go after the peasants. And they’ve already burned my northern-most village.”
“They’re trying to draw you out,” I decided, after studying the situation. “Look, if they can get you up here – what’s the name of this fief?”
“That’s Sir Escut’s land, the Honeyhall,” supplied the Baron’s castellan. “He’s an old knight, but a valiant warrior. His keep is but a small stone tower, surrounded by a single wall. He is the most vulnerable of the four castles in the barony.”
“Which is why they’re menacing it,” I nodded. “See, if you bring your men up here to Honeyhall, in support of Sir Escut, you’ll come to face that band of skirmishers who are harassing the villages . . . but you’ll also leave this entire western frontier unguarded. If I was a goblin general, I’d want to get as many of your men out in the open as possible, so I could push through behind them and cross through your lands toward Vorone before you could turn your army around and challenge them.”
“That would work,” Baron Magonas agreed, reluctantly. “But I can’t let the man languish when help is so close at hand . . .”
“Then don’t,” I agreed. “Send a message to him to lead his people to Green Hill.”
“And abandon a castle to the beasts?” the Baron asked, as if I’d suggested throwing his nubile daughter at them. “The Green Hill does not retreat!”
“The Green Hill will be covered with little furry guys in a fortnight, if you don’t,” I countered. “Do not spend your strength idly, my lord. Behind these walls you’re well-defended. If your people are out in the open, however, I think you’ll find that these few skirmishers up here in Honeyhall are just screening a much larger force . . . probably hidden in this vicinity, to the west,” I added, placing my dagger down on the spot I felt was most likely. “Tell me, is this region heavily wooded?”
“Aye, that’s the Honeywood,” agreed the knight wearing a surcoat with two trees in green and white on it. “A richly timbered region. Next to honey, it is all Sir Escut’s land produces. It is not easily reached, so the timbering goes slowly, but he sells ten or twelve wagon loads to my mill a year.”
“Then that’s where they’ll be hiding,” I suggested. “If you like, we can scry the area, see if we can find them.”
“You could use sorcery to see the enemy?” asked the Baron, suspiciously.
I acted surprised. “Has your own court mage not done so already?”
“Green Hill hasn’t had a court mage in my lifetime,” the Baron admitted. “At need we will hire a spellmonger of Vorone, but we are not a wealthy barony. If your magics can tell us where they are, then do so!” urged the nobleman. “Then we can strike!” he added, dramatically pounding a fist into his palm.
I could appreciate that. Any court wizard worth a damn was going to cost real money. Any magi who didn’t cost that much wasn’t going to be much of a court wizard. And while Green Hill was a proud Wilderlands barony, timber and honey was about all anyone really grew up here. If I were shopping for a patron, it wouldn’t have appealed to me.
“I can. Curmor,” I called out, and was quickly joined by the two Gilmorans and Isily. “You came through this area, didn’t you?”
“More northernly than that,” he admitted. “I rode down the stream, here, next to that decrepit old tower with the honey bee sigil.”
“That’s the one,” I nodded. “Any chance you could scry out the woods there? You’re most familiar with them.”
He shrugged. “No problem. Do you have a quiet room I could use?” The Baron ordered a squire to quickly find him a spot where he wouldn’t be disturbed. I continued to lecture as I studied the map. I moved a few units around, and added my own three thousand man expeditionary force with two caltrops for the cavalry, a wooden toy sword for our i
nfantry, and a hastily-whittled arrow for our archers. I also removed the small block of goblins that had been sitting in Grimly Wood.
“Consider, my lord, the strategic situation: the gurvani know that if they have a hope of investing Tudry and eventually conquering Vorone, they’re going to have to move troops through this region. They can’t get down the Great Western Road, because it’s thick with heavy cavalry in territory that favors them. They can’t penetrate further south because of how wide the rivers get south of Vorone.
“So they’re going to have to come at the city from the north, and that means this whole region,” I said, waving my hands over the wide swath of territory between Tudry and the border with Castal, “this region is going to have to be penetrated. Right now the Duke is calling in as many troops as possible to Vorone. Green Hill guards his northern flank. If the gurvani can convince you to leave the safety of the castle, and you lose your men in an attack out in the open or even merely fail to meet their advance in time, then they will have a free corridor from the northwest down to Vorone. With Green Hill gone or neutralized, they could play havoc with Duke Lenguin’s defenses.”
“Aye, you speak wisely, Warmage,” the Baron nodded, wearily, as he followed my reasoning. “I was going to order five hundred men to go relieve Sire Escut on the morrow. The harrying has been scant enough that we estimated a war band of two hundred, perhaps. Five hundred cavalry should have been sufficient for such a foe, I thought.”
“For a normal raid by the mountain folk, perhaps,” I agreed. “But this is no ordinary raid. Send two hundred men, all horse, and as many empty wagons as you can spare. But not to attack – escort Sire Escut and his folk back to Green Hill, and encamp them in the outer bailey with the rest. And have them bring every morsel they can scrounge.”
He was spared from any other bad news by the abrupt return of Curmor, who looked troubled. “You were right, Captain,” he told me, shaking his head. “They have two shamans with them, from what I can tell, and they were trying to hide from scrying.”
“How did you get through?” I asked, curious. He just shrugged.
“I’m just that good,” he dismissed. “Anyway, there are about three thousand of the hairy little buggers holed up in that Honeywood area, near as I can tell.”
“Three . . . thousand?” asked the Baron, looking shocked. “They infest the wood like fleas on a dog!”
“Which would make your five hundred troops outnumbered six-to-one in open battle,” I pointed out. “Even behind the wall of the Honeyhall, if it is as simple a fortification as you say, your men’s skill on horses would be for naught. And if they attacked at night, your men would be almost helpless.”
“But to just abandon the Honeyhall?” he asked, scandalized. “I will not yield to such filth! It stings my honor!” he said, resolutely, pounding his fist defiantly. It was very inspirational – but we didn’t need inspiration right now, we needed a plan with half a chance of success.
“Better a stung honor and a hall temporarily ceded than a dead lord and slaughtered peasants,” pointed out Isily, diplomatically. There are thousands of goblins in the Wilderlands, now. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps. And hundreds of shamans armed with irionite – witchstones,” she explained. The Baron looked pale.
“What have we done that the gods would curse us so?” he demanded.
“It isn’t the gods, Baron,” I corrected. “It’s one god in particular. The Dead God.” I told him the tale of who was behind the invasion, and his face turned ashen within his coif. By the time I’d told the abbreviated version of the Fall of Boval Vale, he looked deathly.
“So I can appreciate your fervor, Baron,” I said, quietly, “but it’s going to be a long war. We won’t have the luxury of honor on the battlefield, I’m afraid, and the sooner we can all appreciate that, the sooner we stop wasting our resources on vainglory, instead of victory.” I studied the map a little more. “Mavone, what do you think the chances are that the goblins have scried our position?”
The other warmage snorted. “Near certain, Captain. Unless we were blessed with an idiot as a foeman. Oh, your men were covered, I’m sure, but not Green Hill.”
“That’s what I figured. So he knows about your men – how many, total?”
“A hundred knights,” he counted off, “Five hundred squires and sergeants, four hundred mounted yeomen, five hundred peasant levies, and five hundred archers. In addition to the thousand mercenary cavalry in the bailey.”
“So three thousand men, give-or-take,” I nodded. No sense in mentioning how I would be taking the mercenaries with me just yet. “And if you sent five hundred off to Honeyhall as you wished, then you would have had to send at least a thousand to get them back. Any less, and the goblins would just continue to lure you out, picking your small groups off until you figured it out. By then, your defenses would be considerably weakened. However, perhaps we can use that against them . . .”
I pointed out something I thought was obvious, and when everyone else was convinced it was obvious, I proposed a plan. And then I asked for everyone there to poke holes in it. When they couldn’t – after some adjustment – they agreed that it just might work.
Even the Baron pronounced it a fit strategy, though it did mean risking some of his people and abandoning the Honeyhall. It took maybe ten minutes of sorting and deciding to flesh out the plan after that, and then as the afternoon sun began to set, I sent out the appropriate messages to the appropriate people to get things started.
Baron Magonas insisted that my Gilmoran warmagi – and Lady Isily – take supper with him and his wife and closest advisors, to fill them in on everything that had happened at Wilderhall and since. The rumors were flying fast and furious after what I’d done there, so I did feel a certain responsibility to correct some of the most erroneous notions – such as the rumor I destroyed the Censorate’s headquarters with magical lightning.
Needless to say, the Alshari noblemen were shocked by the events. But since it meant I was here to save their asses, they were reluctantly supportive.
Chapter Four:
Wilderhall, Midsummer
The Bargain
“How dare you!” sneered Sago, who was a master of the sneer. “You come here to talk about how all of our lives are in danger, and you want to bandy about concerning your fee?” he asked, scolding. “For shame, Spellmonger! You should be happy to do your duty to your Duke and the Duchy! It is a privilege for someone of your station to do so! You should be honored by even the suggestion, much less an actual appointment! Yet you sit here and press for coin like any common fishwife!”
“And yet when I set out for Farise, wasn’t it the barons who wouldn’t march without gold in their purses first?” I countered.
That wasn’t entirely fair – only five barons actually refused to march until they got paid, in advance, for the service. By tradition, every Ducal vassal owes thirty days of armed service to the Duchy, upon demand. But everyone knew the trip down the rugged Farisian peninsula was going to take two months, minimum, and the barons wouldn’t budge until they got paid for at least that second month, in advance. It had been a bit of a scandal, and they had delayed our march for a few days, but in the end the Duchies had paid. It made me feel a little better that those stubborn barons and their men-at-arms, being stuck at the rear of the column, got to tip-toe through our mud and offal for their intransigence – and the Farisian campaign was famous for its mud and offal.
“It is no crime for a gentleman to secure his rights,” Sago said, indignantly.
“Is it any less a crime for a tradesman to secure his fee?” I riposted.
“Enough!” Kindine bellowed, as Sago prepared to rise and continue arguing. “Matters of financing the expedition are certainly up for discussion. Men and horses need to eat, armorers need to be paid. How much coin will you need?”
“A lot,” I conceded. “At least ten thousand ounces of gold, if we’re to move quickly. But that’s not the issue. I’m not discussing o
utfitting a mere company of cavalry, here, I’m talking about employing the deadliest warmagi in six generations. Proven warriors, now armed with witchstones and at their mightiest. Warmagi familiar with the foe and who possess the—”
“It’s like the old saying about the young noblewoman who would not consent to keep a knight company until he promised her a diamond necklace,” cackled Lady Arnet. “And then the next morning he gives her a silver trinket. We’ve settled on what you are, Master Spellmonger, there’s no need to sell yourself all over again. Now we’re haggling about the price of your virtue. How much will it take to buy protection of these vaunted warmagi?”
“Respect,” I answered, simply. “First, the Duchy will relax the Bans on magic. Not all of them – but those which prohibit a mage from inheriting lands or owning property.”
“What?” Master Dunselen asked, confused. “But no magelord has stood in the Five Duchies since the fall of the Magocracy!”
“Exactly,” I said, coolly. “For centuries, now, our profession has been hampered by the Bans. Understandably – the wars between magelords nearly ruined the East, before the invasions. Controlling the mage folk made sense when the Easterners were rebelling and plotting revolt every six months.
“But not now,” I continued. “Now we’re faced with a threat that dwarfs the petty rebellions of the eastern wizards those rules were made to counter. Now we’re faced with an implacable foe that uses magic like you all use the air for breath. My warmagi aren’t going to be willing to plunge back into battle without an assurance that afterwards they can – and will – be properly rewarded for their efforts.”
“Isn’t gold reward enough?” Count Kindine asked, distastefully. “Every warmage I’ve met has been happy enough with it.”
“These aren’t ordinary warmagi,” I reminded him. “Each one of them now has more power than – well, pretty much anyone. How much gold do you think one could earn with one? How much would a lord pay to make his castle walls impregnable? Not in six months, but in six hours? How much to keep the wooden supports from rotting – ever? How much to ensure the wells are deep and pure?
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 8
