I gave him a shot with the warwand, hitting him square in the chest. It was a Harlon wand, made of hickory, a style of concussion wave Tyndal favored for sheer power. The Harlon enchantments were designed back in the age of the Magocracy to stop a charging horse – the kind ridden by my barbarian ancestors.
The blast knocked the man off his feet and into the crowd behind him. His blade was thrown out of his reach. Unfortunately, a few bystanders on the fringes of the crowd were also hit, though not nearly as hard. I didn’t mind that – I was happy with the result. My apprentice isn’t particularly sophisticated. That’s not always a bad thing.
For the two men in front of me, I threw a Caliocusion spell I had stored in my arsenal. The Caliocusion is a very specific wave of sound generated and directed magically into a cone of force. But it’s not designed to deafen your foe. I may not have had a mageblade, but when you have the biggest ball in the game, you should use it.
The Caliocusion was perfect for this situation, because it was non-lethal. I didn’t want to be responsible for plowing through a group of onlookers. I raised my hand, summoned the power, let the spell fall into my mind, and spoke the mnemonic. The air rippled and we heard a loud whine as the wave bunched, then activated. Rather than assault their ears, the concussion that resulted sent one Censor sprawling like his brother, and dropped the man with the staff to one knee.
A nasty side effect? It makes you loose your bowels and bladder.
While I attacked their center, Tyndal engaged the man on our far left sword-to-sword and had shot – and missed – at the fifth man with some spell I didn’t pay attention to. He and his opponent were well-matched, for all of the Censor’s height, and while the checkered cloak remained un-bloodied, so did Tyndal. He was still dueling, Slasher in his right hand, a wand in his left. He was alive, which is all I really wanted to know. I was busy. There were spells coming at us I had to defend against.
Banamor wasn’t totally useless in a fight. While he didn’t know any warmagic, he’d spent plenty of time dodging rough situations, as any footwizard must. I saw him struggle to his knees, curse, and then pull something out of his pouch. He said a few words over it and threw it at our attackers. Whatever spell he cast entangled the feet of the man Tyndal’s spell had missed, so he stumbled face-first into the fairgrounds before he’d crossed half the distance to us.
There were plenty of spells incoming, too, and our defenses were only partially successful. I felt a searing heat tear down my left leg and side, realizing someone had employed a paralysis spell or sensory augmentation spell or something that made me feel like I was on fire. My defenses were prepared against real fire – I hadn’t anticipated psychosomatic attacks like that. Live and learn.
Right about then Banamor took a hit, too, a ball of green flame making an arc lazily in the air before it hit our defenses and shimmered (mostly) into harmlessness. The parts that weren’t harmless slapped Banamor in the face and neck, though, and he was down moments after his own spell had worked.
The first wave of attacks had bought me a half-second of time to contemplate my next move, as bodies skidded to a halt in slow motion around me. The sphere still hovered helpfully over my shoulder, the warwand was ready for another blast . . . and I was still uncomfortably unarmed. Maybe it’s a security thing, but unlike some warmagi I hated to fight without a sword in my hand. It’s comforting.
One of the Censors had helpfully dropped his mageblade.
I sent a tendril of force to summon it to my hand. It responded to my call like a friendly dog, and came flying through the air and toward my palm. I turned my attention to carefully shooting at the man with the staff on the right with the Harlon wand. The staff’s defenses blunted the force of the attack, unfortunately, but it kept him from firing a spell in return.
Tyndal was dueling toe-to-toe with his foe, who had recovered his footing from Banamor’s spell, their mageblades flashing in the sun as strike after strike was thrown and blocked. It was tempting to just watch Tyndal use his sword. He moved with grace and fluidity, a natural athleticism I envied. While the Censor was larger, fresher, and had a heavier blade, Tyndal had been fighting all day.
With, I realized with sudden dismay, a blunted blade. The Censor did not enjoy the same handicap. That explained the lack of blood. Well, I couldn’t very well stop my own fight to magically sharpen his blade or something. Tyndal was on his own.
Then I was too busy to pay further attention, because one of the idiots my sound wave had knocked down inconveniently stood up and charged me. He arrived only moments after the scavenged mageblade came to my hand, and then I was fighting for my life, too.
My opponent was good – far better than I wanted him to be. More, he was armored, and I was not. But the moment the hilt of the summoned sword smacked against my palm and my fingers curled around it, armor didn’t matter anymore. I raised the sword and took the brunt of his blow on it, stopping his advance.
I could tell that the warmage was surprised – he’d expected an easy kill, no doubt, and did not expect me to be able to arm myself so quickly. His eyes went wide as his blade bit mine, and I took the barest of moments to lock eyes with him. They were filled with righteous fury. He paused the barest moment to challenge me.
It was a dramatic move, but not a smart one. His momentum bowled us both over and we struggled desperately to get control over our blades and regain our footing. I was slightly faster, but not quite fast enough for my purposes. We were back on our feet, blades in hand, circling each other again in moments.
That’s when things got complicated. Every feint and strike was anticipated, every move countered. So we hammered at each other as fast and as hard as we could. When you can tell by the set of his feet how he was going to strike, and you knew exactly what you would do to block it, it’s hard to find an advantage.
The mageblade I had rescued was shorter than Twilight by almost three inches, but otherwise it was a very serviceable blade. Unlike Twilight, it had few spells on it that I could feel – likely because of the sheer difficulty in enchanting such things without irionite. It struck me just how much more powerful we were than they were, and that was gratifying.
Which is why, twenty lightning-fast strikes later, as I was starting to get bored and frustrated and I wanted to end the duel to move on to the rest of my day I realized that, indeed, irionite made us much, much more powerful than the Censors.
So why was I standing there trading blows with this idiot?
Enough. I snapped out of the hypnotic pattern of steel-on-steel long enough to whirl halfway around, and put my right boot into my opponent’s chest hard enough to knock him back three steps. He would recover in seconds.
But seconds were all I needed.
I summoned a lot of power from the sphere, shaped it crudely, and cast it as my foe was winding up for his next blow. My spell took hold, and he floated four feet into the air.
The warmage who was casting a spell also got jerked up into the air, as did the other checkered cloaks. That didn’t keep them from being dangerous, but it deprived them of the traction and leverage they would have needed to actually fight us hand-to-hand. You couldn’t fight as well with your feet dangling in the air.
Tyndal was just as surprised as everyone else when his foe jerked up out of his range, and at first he thought it was another attack.
“STOP!” I bellowed, allowing time to snap back to its normal progression.
There was a strange quiet across the field as our onlookers tried to understand what was happening. I paused to catch my breath from the sudden exertion as Tyndal joined me.
“Nice spell, Master,” he said, his chest heaving.
“Nice swordplay, Apprentice,” I replied. “Watch them. If anyone tries to cast a spell, make them stop.”
He nodded understandingly, and turned to face the dangling Censors. None of the warmagi looked particularly happy about their sudden ascension, but they hadn’t tried to break the spell yet, either.
I pointed with my fingers and directed the levitating men to congregate in front of me, at least ten feet apart. By that point they had mostly stop flailing around, and were instead fearfully waiting what I would do next. For that matter, so was I.
It was a difficult situation. It was even more difficult, I realized, than I thought it was, once the implications of the attack settled in.
You see, there wasn’t really anything I could do to them. It wasn’t as if I could turn them over to the local lord for disposition, as they were technically above the laws of even the Dukes.
But I couldn’t just execute them, either, even if I’d had the inclination. I had no authority at the Fair. I was a guest. So were they. We’d sworn an oath pledging the peace for the event.
“Your names?” I asked curtly, when the flying Censors had been gathered together. “Let’s just start with you, Commander,” I said, indicating the man who had been bearing the staff.
“I am Commander Dareen of the Central Castali Commandery of the Royal Censorate of Magic. You are a violator of the lawful Bans, Minalan the Spellmonger, and this bit of sorcery won’t save you!”
“It’s working so far,” I pointed out. “They only sent five of you?”
“It was all that could be gathered when word of . . . when we departed,” answered one of the other men, sullenly. “Most of our brothers are scouring the lands searching for you.”
“I’m honored,” I snorted. “You could have just asked the Duke, you know. I’ve been living in the same place for almost a year, now.” That earned me a dirty look. The Censorate wasn’t on good terms with Duke Rard at the moment, largely because of me. “Still, now that you’re here, I’m curious. Why attack me at the Fair?”
“We do not need to answer your questions, Abomination!” one of the younger men, about my age, spat at me. He would have had a more dramatic presentation if he didn’t have urine and feces running down his leg. I love that spell.
“You don’t need to breathe, either,” I observed. “Keep speaking to me disrespectfully and I’ll see what I can arrange. And that’s ‘Lord Abomination’ to you. I’ve been knighted.”
“Against the Bans!” another Censor said, outraged.
“The Bans are suspended in Castal and Alshar,” Tyndal informed them darkly. “Perhaps you have not heard the news, but there is a war going on right now. To stop an invasion.”
“A goblin uprising is no excuse to overturn four hundred years of law!” bellowed the largest of them, the brute Tyndal had been dueling.
“It’s not an uprising, it’s an invasion!” Tyndal shouted back. “Legions of them, pouring over the Mindens like ants over honeycomb! And the Dead God . . . dear Ishi save us from the Dead God! If Master Minalan hadn’t been there, you’d be fleeing for your lives right now! “
“That is still no excuse!” the leader hissed, looking at me balefully. He wasn’t an attractive man, and he had misplaced the lower half of his left ear someplace. I suppressed a desire to burn him to death where he hung in the sky.
“The Duke rules in Castal, not the Censorate,” Banamor said, dusting off his robe indignantly. “And the Duke has relaxed the Bans.”
“No Duke has sovereignty over the Censorate!” the big man boasted with a snort. “We are the King’s Men!”
“A dead king, who cannot answer for you,” I observed. “Nor can he save you, now. Duke Rard is not going to be pleased at this attack . . . nor is his new Court Mage. Master Hartarian.”
That produced an audible gasp from them, and that was gratifying. Hartarian was their old boss, the head of their Order . . . and I had bought him off like a roadside bandit. Well, it hadn’t quite been that easy, but the allure of irionite is powerful for any mage, especially one of Hartarian’s abilities.
“That’s right,” I nodded, “Your former master – and current foe – will now sit in judgment of you.”
“We do not answer to any court mage,” sneered the half-eared man. “We are the King’s Men! The law says we are inviolate!” That wasn’t technically true, even in the best of times. There had been several cases where the order had been co-opted by various Dukes, or had itself been used as a tool against them over the centuries. The Censorate was as independent as it could be, legally, but it didn’t operate in a vacuum.
“So who will you complain to, if the law is broken?” I asked. “Who is responsible for upholding the law, and seeing to its accountability?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. “The Dukes,” the half-eared man said, sullenly.
“That’s right, the Dukes,” I lectured, smacking the warwand in the palm of my hand and pacing in front of them. “The fact is that the Censorate is only a few hundred warmagi spread out over thousands of domains. That’s fine for hunting witches or rousting footwizards, but if the Censorate really needs help, where does it turn? The Duchies. The Dukes. And their Court Magi.
“Only you’re in Castal right now, and the Duke here has decided he’s not going to help you anymore. Within a few moons, the Duke of Remere will also relax the Bans there. So that leaves you . . . well, a few thousand miles away from the nearest Duke who might lend a hand.”
“We have more resources than you know,” the leader said, evenly. He did not seem terribly concerned about his position.
“And we are fighting a war we cannot lose . . . and we will lose it, if you fanatics have your way. As far as I’m concerned, you just committed treason against humanity, not to mention ruining my day at the Fair. For that alone I should roast you. But then you went and started a magical battle in the middle of a crowd, which is just unprofessional. So I think . . . I think I’ll turn you over to Master Hartarian. He’ll know what to do with you.”
They looked more angry than afraid. Their leader shook his head, sneering at my proposal.
“General Hartarian – Master Hartarian will not punish us for pursuing our lawful duty. He is a fair and just man – he trained me in tracking, and a more honorable Censor I’ve never met.”
“I think he’ll imprison you, at the very least. Probably in the same cells you kept some of your prisoners. And perhaps as long. I wouldn’t count on a lot of loyalty from your former commander, either. He made it quite clear what his decision was in regards to the Duchies. He’s directed all those who disagree to go east. So you should be on the other side of Remere’s border, not this side of Castal’s. That you are not is all the proof Hartarian needs to justify your sentence.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” the leader said, slowly. I thought maybe he was coming around. I should have known better – you only get to become a Censor in the first place if you’re already half a fanatic. “The moment we are down, we will be gutting you.”
“That’s not the wisest thing to say to the man who holds your body prisoner,” chuckled Tyndal. “Nor the most convincing.”
“Nor do I think it is within your right to do so,” a new voice said, from behind me. I half turned to see who it was, prepared to use my wand again.
But the old knight who approached us was not brandishing a sword . . . although his frown was sharp enough to cut bread.
He was a short man, little fleshy with rich living. His curly gray hair complemented his beard, which was still dark, but losing that battle. He had the look of keen wit in his eye, and he moved as gracefully as a man could who was wearing a chainmail gambeson and dragging a longsword around with him on his hip. Chainmail. On a warm day like today.
“And who are you, Sir Knight, to dictate the law to me?” the Censor asked, haughtily.
The old man’s gray eyes narrowed sharply. “I, my dear Censor, am by the Grace of Luin the Lawgiver, Baron Arathanial of Sendaria, House Lensely. And this is my Fair you gentlemen are fucking up. Now, will someone please . . . do whatever it is they need to do so that their feet are on the ground?” he asked.
“Then let’s repair to my tent . . . where I can tell you exactly how I feel about idiots who brawl at my fair, no matter what co
lor their cloak. Guards!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lunch With The Baron
Baron Arathanial of Sendaria was the kind of noble you encounter in stories, not in real life. I’d heard about him often enough in my first few months in the Bontal region, and you can tell a lot about a man from how he deals with his underlings and subordinates, how he handles adversity and dissention. Over the course of the next hour, I felt I got to know him enough to know what kind of man he was.
He was the very picture of a feudal baron: He was a charismatic leader, a wise judge of character, with a generous yet cautious character and a casual conversational style that put you at ease . . . until it became a sharp knife at your throat. Arathanial was a self-possessed man who understood exactly who he was and why the gods had deigned to put him in his station.
And he really resented anyone disturbing his fair.
It took twenty minutes for the Baron to round up enough guards and wardens to disarm the Censors and secure them, against their protest. When the leader – his name was Dalrent – haughtily declared that he was above a Duke’s justice, much less a Baron’s, Arathanial wasn’t intimidated. Instead he looked over Dalrent like he was a piece of beef that had gone off, and grunted.
“Did you and your men pay admission to enter the fairgrounds?” he asked.
“They would not admit us without it,” Dalrent dismissed. “A few pennies, it was no matter.”
“And did you not swear the Fair Oath, when you paid your admission? In front of a coinbrother?”
A few of them had the grace to look guilty. But not Dalrent. He looked entitled.
“What of it?”
“Well, when you swore to that oath, you swore not to start any fights, and you swore yourself to the Baron’s justice if you did. I’m the Baron. I hold the commonest serf to that rule, as an oath sworn is an oath sworn and every man the custodian of his own honor. Is your honor not prized so highly?”
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 51
