The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage

by Terry Mancour

  I suddenly imagined scenes like Kitsal happening all over northern Alshar, with rural villages turned into ghoulish manufactories of terror and despair, their product fueling a concerted effort to turn any organized resistance against the Dark God into a terrified and panicked mob of desperate, hopeless souls.

  I allowed the spells to fall, collected my thoughts, and stood, finally. It was late afternoon, now, and I could see the men in the woods were restless. I couldn’t blame them. I waved Azar and Astyral back over, and put my stone away.

  “Well, I know what they were doing. I even have a fair idea of how they did it. I might even have a glimmer of a notion about how to counter it. At least where it most needs to be countered.

  “But all of that’s secondary,” I sighed, as I pulled on my riding gloves. “Tell off ten men to dig a pit for these poor wretches, so that they may lay at rest and find what peace they might. Put every last bone, every last shred of skin in it, and bury it. We’ll proceed ahead to the temple of Huin and send a priest to do what cleansings he can – perhaps the gods can purify this, this tragic waste of life. I know I can’t.”

  “Are you all right, Captain?” Azar asked, concerned. He was looking at me funny.

  “I’m fine,” I said, leading them away from that stone – that sad little stone where one by one they were brought, beaten, sliced, and bled. “Have the rest of the van go well north of this spot. I don’t want any of the men to see this horror. Bearing witness to this will do nothing but enrage them, and make them prone to error. It’s enough that . . . that we’ve seen it.”

  “Enough, Captain?” asked Astyral, his head cocked. “I’d say it’s more than enough. When we get to Tudry . . .” He looked more serious, more angry, and more anxious than I’d ever seen him.

  “Then there will be vengeance enough for us all,” I agreed, quietly. “I just wish Master Dunselen was here, so that he could see just how terrible a goblin’s witchstone can be. Come on, let’s move on to the temple. If ever I’ve needed the purification of the divine, it’s after putting myself through that.”

  Azar nodded, and began shouting orders to the Hellriders, as he motioned the trooper who was holding my horse forward.

  It was only after I’d mounted Traveler and we left Kitsal that I realized why everyone had been looking at me strangely.

  Tears had been streaming down my face constantly since I’d finished the spell.

  Chapter Ten:

  Exercise With The Lord Marshal

  Wilderhall, Midsummer

  I never thought I’d hold a sword, right up to the day when I finally did. And I’m not going to claim that I was a natural talent, from the moment I took one in hand. In fact, according to my instructors at War College, my early attempts at the noble art of steel were laughable, at best. I am not a natural swordsman.

  But I am a good student – I had to be, back during my days at the academy. The Swordmaster at the academy was a nominal presence, a drunken knight with a flamboyant personality and a taste for young whores.

  He was there mostly to appease the nobility’s burning need to stab at each other in adolescence, and to teach us peasants enough basics so as not to embarrass ourselves – because while spellmongers and court magi cannot hold lands, they can be challenged to duels. It has happened. I had a passing interest in swordplay, but I never thought it would come in handy and the Swordmaster smelled funny, so I went back to my books.

  Most of my peers were disdainful of the sword as a means of defense, or had long ago mastered its use under private tutors. I wasn’t. When I got drafted and I realized that my life might depend on my ability to whip three feet of steel around, I realized I had to study. So I did.

  For the first few weeks of War College, I spent what little free time I had in the yards, sparring with anyone who would teach me a thing or two. Luckily, nearly every older soldier there was eager to teach all the little tricks and techniques they’d picked up over the years. And I devoured them.

  I discovered that sparring was fun. Learning how to stand, how to hold a blade, how to balance, how to strike, how to recover, how to parry – none of it has anything to do with how high-born you were. I went from laughable to respectable, and I could have stopped but when there’s nothing else to do around camp or on ship or in a garrison, you train and you learn.

  I would claim that it was the essential aesthetic of the weapon and the purity of the dance of death it weaves in the hands of a passionate artist that drove me to the pursuit. But that would be incorrect. At the time, I knew I was going into the jungles of Farise, and I was terrified I would fall apart like a besotted peasant militia and piss myself before getting killed the first time I was in combat. So I studied . . . and I got better.

  A lot better.

  Part of it is the magic, of course, and part of it is pure swordsmanship. There are plenty of warmagi whose skill with a mageblade is better than mine. My comrade and colleague Azar, for instance, can do things with steel I’ve never seen another swordsman do before. He has really long arms, which helps.

  I’ve heard there are eastern warmagi who will fight four opponents at once in practice with those incredibly thin eastern mageblades and best them all without even using as much as a cantrip. I’m not one of those, either. Indeed, without magic, I’d say I’m as skillful as your average enthusiastic squire or competent man-at-arms.

  But once you add magic into the equation, things get a lot better. I was counting on that. Otherwise, I was going to get my ass kicked, I could tell.

  The clang and clank of armor and swords and shields all banging around told me where the practice yards were without asking. Even one man in armor makes a terrible noise just walking across the room. Put a hundred of them on a yard at once, and the noise is nearly deafening.

  The Lord Marshal was in his practice armor, well-beaten and hacked, and he was entertaining two opponents at once. Squires, it looked like, they had that eager-puppy look, a mixture of pride and fear and pure cockiness. They had probably been practicing swordplay since they were seven, but they were nothing compared to Count Sago.

  He was good – as in, stop whatever you’re doing because you can’t take your eyes off of the way the man used a blade, that kind of good. Sago had complete control of that fight from start to finish, and he was brutal to his students. He slapped away their swords and made them stumble and pushed them off balance and did all those other things an experienced swordsman learns how to do.

  Meanwhile, he yelled obscenities at them for their failures in a voice loud enough to be heard over the racket. Clear across the yard.

  I watched for a while, and despite his clear mastery of the sword, a dozen casual conversations in yards like this over the years came back to me: every swordsman has weaknesses that can be exploited, if you have the wit to see them. I tried to find Sago’s, and it took a while.

  But I did note that Count Sago couldn’t seem to keep his left foot on the ground when he advanced, and that he cocked his shoulder up a bit too far before he threw a blow overhand. Other than that, his technique was near flawless in my estimation. He validated it a moment later, when he disarmed one squire and had sent the other one on his armored backside when he was off-balance.

  Then he helped them up and spent five minutes explaining exactly why they had screwed up, and what to do to fix it. Then he got a drink of water and noticed me standing there.

  “Good morrow, Master Spellmonger,” he said, pleasantly enough. “Thank you for attending me.”

  “I am at your service, Lord Marshal,” I said, bowing formally. I was still wearing my silly hat – I’d forgotten to take it off – and it almost fell off when I bowed. “What do you require of me?”

  “You are a warmage?” he grunted, nodding toward Slasher’s scabbard in my hand.

  “Trained and certified,” I acknowledged.

  “Then you know which end of a sword to hold. Good. Armor up. Let’s see how well you fight. Single sword,” he added. The feelin
g I was about to get my ass kicked returned.

  I nodded, as if nothing would please me more in the world, and followed a squire who brought me to the armorer – mock armorer, I should say. All of his swords and axes were blunted. Even the maces were made of weighted wood, not steel or iron. He helped me into a set of practice armor and allowed me to look over his weaponry. I finally selected a blunted iron sword near the size of Slasher, though it wasn’t curved or nearly as light as my mageblade. The balance was decent, but not outstanding. It was a few inches too short, too.

  Close enough. After I got the padded helm strapped on, I waddled back out to the yard, where Count Sago was putting on his gloves menacingly. You might not think the simple act of putting on gloves can be threatening, but that should just demonstrate the competence of this man at his craft. Count Sago’s fingers were more ruthless than most men’s steely gaze.

  I wasn’t afraid. I’d gotten smacked around a practice yard before. I’d gotten my ass kicked before. I wasn’t expected to win, not without magic. In fact, winning against him even with magic might be a bad thing, politically speaking.

  “Defend yourself,” he said, taking a guard position, as soon as I got my helm on. He was using a hand-and-a-half sword, a kind of all-purpose knight’s blade useable on horseback or on foot, at home or abroad. He held it steadily in one meaty fist making tiny circles in the air with his blade as if to taunt me.

  I didn’t rise to the taunt. I’m far more of a defensive swordsman than an offensive one. Instead of carving away merrily, like many knights I’d seen, I tend to be cautious, sensible, and sturdy . . . until my opponent makes a mistake. Then I strike.

  Or, at least, that’s what I try to do.

  Whatever guile I might have at swords wasn’t impressing Count Sago. He slapped my blade away two or three times, commenting that I wasn’t attacking aggressively enough . . . while knowing full well that being that aggressive was going to put me at his mercy. Instead, I chased his sword point through the air with the tip of my own, until he got fed up and laid into me.

  Now, when you think of “swordplay”, no doubt you’re thinking of the delicate interplay of blade on blade, where technique is paramount. That holds true in some circles – indeed, in the east they rarely use a blade any other way – but Count Sago was a husky knight and a legendary warrior, on the tournament fields or in the battlefield. When he indulged in “swordplay,” there were no half-speed strikes or pulled blows. My wrist and shoulder stung with the impact of his steel on mine.

  That first pass he pressed the guard of my blade harder than I’ve ever seen a man do one-handed, to the point where I had to focus to keep him from pushing through my guard – just in time for him to reverse the force of his push, allow me to force my own blade out of position without his resisting it, and then a half-step, a turn, a flick of the wrist . . . and my helm rang out like a temple bell.

  Hard, that is.

  I caught a wicked chuckle from him as he completed the pass, and I silently cursed myself for falling for the trick. I allowed him a second pass, where I didn’t fall for the same trick twice, thus demonstrating that I had at least half a brain in my head, and even managed to escape without him landing a blow. After that we circled each other, both studying to see any weakness.

  There wasn’t much, on his part.

  But then I saw that shoulder dip almost imperceptibly, and I managed to whirl around and block a strike that would have removed my kidneys, had we been in earnest. My wrist felt numb at the force of the blow, and I cursed. Sago chuckled and kept going.

  “Well, you aren’t embarrassing yourself, at least,” the knight said, still only using one hand on his sword. It stung a little more because it echoed what I was already thinking. “I’ve seen belted knights who would have done worse.” He tried a feint as he distracted me with his words, but I noted that shoulder going down again and I managed not to be there when his sword whished through the air. “Well done!” he said, encouragingly.

  “If you’re about warmed up, now, Lord Marshal, we can begin,” I said. He snickered at that, and nodded.

  “I was hoping that wasn’t your best work,” he said, his face full of pity.

  I could have just stayed there and let him hit me until he got his frustrations out – but I didn’t think that Count Sago was that kind of man. You learn a lot about a man’s character by how he uses a blade. I got the feeling he wanted to see me at my best, and truthfully I was only at my best when I used magic.

  As my blade swam through the air, I mentally felt for my stone and brought forth a tendril of energy, and fed it to a spell I had hung for just such an occasion. I triggered the working with a softly spoken word, and suddenly everything was in slow motion. Count Sago’s blade was sailing for me making a blatant arc of steel in the air, one I was easily able to dodge by stepping back. I waited for the point of the blade to pass in front of my chest, and then stepped in as Sago became slightly unbalanced.

  I wasn’t going to let that advantage pass: I grabbed his wrist and employed just the slightest amount of pressure to encourage his body to follow his momentum. When I was certain he was off balance, I carefully aimed for his now-exposed helmet, and struck him thrice, twice on the left temple and once on the right, as he fell to the ground. Then I took two steps to the side, turned to face him, and brought my sword up into a showy sort of guard that the eastern swordsmen fancy to impress girls. Then I dropped the spell.

  And Sago fell on his face.

  I give him credit – he rolled back to his feet in full armor a lot sprightlier than I would have believed. He was grinning too, which I wasn’t sure was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Ah!” he said, “at last – the vaunted warmagics!”

  “It’s a poor substitute for a lifetime on the yards,” I said, diplomatically.

  “Any advantage in war is an advantage you take if you value victory,” he quoted. I remember hearing that back in War College. I forget who said it. “So if you can use magic to best me, pray do so, Spellmonger!”

  “That’s ‘Master’ Spellmonger!” I said, grinning back at him. For a moment, we were two kids playing in the temple yard sandbox. I suddenly saw a much different side to Sago, as I was trying to kill him. I re-energized the warspell and watched everything slow down again. He took two long steps to close the gap between us, his sword half-way thrust forward. A less experienced fighter might have taken that for a potential opening, but I knew that if I tried to counter the strike with one of my own, Sago would have a counter move that was likely to make me look stupid.

  Instead I waited patiently for his second step and his lunge, and I just stepped out of the way while the sword passed next to me, his form nearly perfect. It seemed almost a shame to let him stumble like that – but his body was completely open and he was right: you don’t give up an advantage like that.

  I hit him seven times before I assumed my own high-guard position, both hands on the hilt, blade perfectly parallel to the ground, weight on my forefoot, toe of my hindfoot just barely touching the sand of the yard. Then I collapsed the spell again.

  Count Sago sprawled into the sand at my feet. A hush fell over the yard, which is saying something when you’re talking about a hundred men in steel armor.

  “Well done!” Sago cried, springing to his feet. “Any one of these laggards would have been impaled by that!”

  “Your Excellency, I did use magic,” I pointed out.

  “You used your damned head, is what you did!” he corrected, dusting off his hands. “One of my boys would have tried to meet that thrust with a counter thrust to show off how strong he was, or worse, would have missed it all together. You had the sense to move out of the way and not let my attack ruin your own. That, Spellmonger, is far more important in swordplay than how pretty you look in your armor. Hear that?” he bellowed, loud enough for everyone in the yard to hear him, “This mage just did something that none of you maggots has been able to do in three years! Pay bloody atte
ntion!”

  After that, we got along famously.

  I can’t really blame Count Sago for his low regard for warmagi. Warmagi cost like mad, compared to an infantry soldier, or even a cavalry soldier, and it was hard to see a return on that investment, usually. Ordinarily, the magical corps of an army is used more in a support function, keeping insects at bay, defensive spells around camp, maybe a little scrying for reconnaissance. More likely they were employed to strengthen castle walls with various charms. A few, like me, actually strapped on a mageblade and fought in battle.

  And some of us are just warmagi because we’re belligerent and Talented and like to hurt things. Not me, but some.

  Sago’s association with warmagi hadn’t been positive, I knew, because he had sailed with the whiney lot who got to fight the Mad Mage’s vicious sea storms as they attempted a mass landing, and weather magi are notoriously emotional. My group had been a little tougher. We’d walked every step of the Farisian peninsula through unfriendly tribesmen, Farisian pickets, the jungle, and the mountains, and those hearty enough to survive attacked the city from the rear. As a result we were far more adept with “active” warmagic, not the passive stuff like fortification spells and weather magic that really pays.

  But as we sat there, helms in the sand, a page bringing us both cool water to drink, I showed him I was as much a soldier – albeit not as good a one as he – as much as I was a mage. I commented about his shoulder, and he grinned and nodded. He pointed out how I dragged my left toe while advancing, and that was dropping the point of my blade by at least an inch. After discussing technique, reminiscing about the war, and covering the finer points of the differences between a war blade and a mageblade, he finally got around to what he wanted to talk to me about in the first place.

  “So, Minalan,” he began, after drinking half a flask of water in one pull, “all of what you said in Council: how much was true?”