“She chose to practice in the courtyard while you slept. We’ll meet her there. Now hurry,” she implored, once again breaking into a run.
They arrived at the courtyard moments later, where a company of guardsmen stood at attention in formation. Nia stood nearby, looking out of place in the otherwise orderly scene. She waved at Randall as they arrived, and moved to stand close to him.
Kirsti stepped up to a lone guard standing in front of the troops. “What is your report, captain?” she asked in a way that was more of an order than a question.
“A hundred and fifty or more armed men coming directly toward the fort, Field Mage,” he replied.
“Rebels?” she asked.
“Possibly, Ma’am,” he said. “They do not seem disciplined; they are not moving in formation, and don’t have any cavalry or siege equipment.”
“They would never breach our walls with so few,” Kirsti mused. “We have to assume that they have a Mage among them. Why else waste their lives so foolishly? We can only hope that they do not know that we have such power, too,” she said, looking to Randall with a wicked grin.
She turned back to the guard and barked out her orders: “Captain, assemble the troops at the gate. We will let them break themselves on our walls for a time, while Randall and I observe from the battlements. At my signal, you will sally forth from the gates and attack.”
“If it would be all right, I would like to join in the attack,” Nia said, interrupting the captain before he could acknowledge the order.
“Nia, no,” Randall cried. “You could be killed!”
The elf snorted and a wry smile twisted her lips into a look of disdain. “If my fate is to be tied to yours, Randall, I will make myself useful in times of need. I am a hunter. For my people, that means soldiering as well as bringing home game. I’ve been trained as well as anyone here, and I would guess better than most. I can take care of myself.”
Kirsti glanced at the captain, who nodded in agreement with the elf’s assessment. “It is settled, then. The elf will be under your command, captain. Randall, come with me. We have no time to waste.”
Randall wanted to protest further, but he couldn’t do so without insulting Nia’s honor, or undercutting Kirsti’s authority. He didn’t know what the guardsmen or Mage saw when they looked at the elf, but all he could see was a little girl heading out into battle. The idea left a sinking feeling in his stomach. Regretfully, he followed the Field Mage up the stairs to the top of the battlements.
Across the grasslands, a small army was assembled. The captain was right; they lacked any sort of real organization, and instead were spread out haphazardly across the expanse. Randall strained to get a clear look, and while the group was armed, there didn’t seem to be any unity or cohesion in the weapons they carried. Pikemen, swordsmen and bowmen were all intermingled together, and none of them seemed to be wearing armor of any sort. Then Randall saw something that caused him to do a double-take. He held up his hand to his forehead to shield out the sun in hopes of getting a better view.
“Is that man carrying a pitchfork?” he asked incredulously.
“Most likely,” Kirsti replied. “Most of the well-organized rebel forces were stamped out months ago,” she explained. “Any remaining today tend to be disgruntled farmers or out of work mercenaries and the like. If they don’t have a Mage among them, we’ll let them come up to the walls and rage at us until they get tired and go home.”
“And if they do have a Mage?” Randall asked.
“Then, we’ll get to have some fun,” Kirsti answered with an eager grin. From the look on her face, Randall guessed that she meant it, too, though “fun” wouldn’t be the word he’d use to describe the upcoming battle. He thought about the last time he’d had to use his power to kill, and felt sick to his stomach.
“Cheer up,” she laughed, clapping him on the back. “It will all be over very quickly. They don’t have any siege engines. We’ll be done in time for dinner.”
Long minutes passed as the pair of Mages watched the army draw nearer. As they approached, Randall thought he could hear singing coming from the back of the throng. The sound was faint, but carried clearly over the clank and jostle of the oncoming horde. Randall cupped his hand over his ear, straining to hear.
It took him a moment to make out the words, and even longer to realize that the song was in elvish. The song was an epic tale, much like the kind Tobsen used to compose around the campfire. It told the story of a siege, and how a small but noble army fought a valiant but doomed battle against a cowardly foe that refused to come out from behind their castle walls.
As Randall listened, his blood began to boil. He was no coward, and there was no honor in sitting here, hidden behind iron and stone. He would earn his share of the glory in the coming battle along with the real soldiers below.
As he turned to race down the battlement steps, two arms wrapped themselves around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. He struggled to break free, but a voice whispered a word into his ear.
He had heard the word once before, but it was so long ago that he had nearly forgotten it entirely. Erliand had used that spell when he had met Randall in Geldorn, pretending to be Old Earl, the caravan master. As the magic echoed in his mind, the rage drained out of him completely, leaving him numb.
Kirsti held onto him for a moment longer until she seemed certain that he had calmed. “It’s a spell,” she explained, pointing to the gate below them. “Our plans are undone.”
Below the two Mages, the gate had been opened, and the troops from the courtyard were pouring out from it, having lost all sense of discipline. They were screaming with bloodlust, and taunting the coming army to fight with them hand-to-hand.
“They outnumber us, and under the influence of the spell, our men will lose the benefit of their training. We will lose,” Kirsti said flatly, without emotion. Randall realized that she must be under the same calming spell that she had placed upon him. They watched the army approach in silence.
“I have an idea,” she said suddenly. She licked her finger and held it up into the air, nodding to herself. “Can you call forth fire?”
Randall nodded, not following her line of thinking. He might be able to take out as many as a dozen men with the spell, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to turn the tide of battle.
“How much variation do you know?” she asked. “Can you make the flame, thinner and longer? I don’t need a great column of fire. I just need a lick of flame to reach the enemy. Can you push it out that far?”
“I can try,” Randall said.
“Good, because I will need to push myself to the limits if we are to have any hope. Get prepared,” she ordered.
Randall nodded as Kirsti began chanting a spell of her own. It was only a half-dozen words, repeated over and over again, but he could feel her pushing every bit of power she could muster into the spell. The spell had a guttural, rasping quality that was clearly demonic in origin. He closed his eyes, and sought the bright pinpoint of light in his mind that was his connection with Llandra.
The power flooded into him, burning away the emotion-draining spell that Kirsti had placed him under. It was no match for the promises of power that the magic whispered into his mind. He opened his eyes and looked out across the plain with a sneer on his lips. The men on the battlefield below were puny. Insignificant. I could crush them all, he thought derisively.
A sickly yellow fog hung in the air, drifting over the oncoming army. As it enveloped the attackers, they began clutching at their sides and coughing, halting their advance. Within moments, the whole army was engulfed in the noxious substance, hacking and vomiting.
“Now!” Kirsti cried suddenly.
Only momentarily startled, Randall barked out a word of his own: “Arkala.” He clamped down hard as the magic spooled out of him, twisting and merging with the spell, willing it to stretch all the way to the oncoming army. It was a trick he’d learned long ago while playing games with Berry on the
open road, but he’d never tried to push the fire so far before.
Pencil-thin and white-hot, a lance of flame raced from his fingertip toward the oncoming army. The magic was bleeding out of him too fast, and he was certain that the spell would fail before the flame reached its target. Suddenly, he felt an influx of power, and felt a soothing purring sensation from his shoulder. Berry was helping—the flame was going to make it!
Then the fire touched the edge of the fog. There was a tremendous roar as the entire cloud exploded in a flame so bright that it seared Randall’s eyes, causing him to see spots. An instant later, a hot burst of wind knocked him from his feet, hurling him backward off the battlement and into the courtyard below. He landed flat on his back, driving the air from his lungs and awareness from his mind.
Chapter 11
Randall was only out for a moment. He woke to Kirsti pulling him to his feet and screaming in his ear. “Get up—the battle still rages on!”
She had a short sword in her hand; she must have gotten it from a fallen soldier, as he hadn’t seen her with a weapon until now. As soon as she seemed satisfied that Randall had regained his senses, she rushed out of the courtyard gate and into throng of people beyond.
The battle wasn’t anything like he envisioned it would be. Nobody was paired off, dueling in any kind of civilized manner. There were no well-defined battle lines, or any sense of military strategy. Throngs of attackers pressed in at small knots of guardsmen, each hacking furiously at any exposed flesh within their reach in a boiling mass of chaos. There was no subtlety in this kind of fighting, no sense of fair play or honor. There was only a kind of primal blood lust as men viciously tried to kill each other as quickly as they could.
The soldiers were doling out far more damage than they took, due in large part to their better armaments, but they were still in danger of being overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. Kirsti waded into the battle, stabbing and slashing with her sword, her face eerily calm. Randall knew that her serenity was due to the spell she had cast upon them both, but there was still something unsettling about the way she methodically hacked through the enemy with no expression at all on her face.
There was no sign of Nia. Randall knew he should be worried sick, but under the influence of the spell, he had to admit to himself that there was nothing he could do for her anyway. He would just have to trust that she was as well-trained as she had claimed.
From the far side of the battlefield, a steady pulse of magic teased Randall’s senses. The enemy Mage was still alive. Randall drew the elven dagger from his waist, and opened himself to Llandra. The power came easily, as it had ever since he broke through the aether-blindness in the elven city. He pushed a portion of it into the runes carved into the hilt of the blade and hidden under its wrappings, reserving the remainder for an emergency.
Time seemed to almost slow, as it had when he had last used the dagger in this way. In his mind’s eye, he could see a constantly shifting path through the battlefield that would bring him face-to-face with the enemy Mage. He began dancing and weaving through the combatants to reach the far side in a ballet of death and pain. Behind him, he left a symphony of pain as his blade cut into the enemy again and again.
The Field Mage matched him step-for-step, achieving with raw strength and determination what he accomplished with finesse and cunning. They had fought their way deep behind the enemy lines when a large knot of men blocked their passage. As Randall prepared to step among them, Kirsti shouted a word and threw out her hand toward the attackers. Roots tore themselves from the earth, rising up like snakes to wrap around the foe, pulling them to the ground and holding them fast. The sounds of snapping bones and strangled screams faded behind them as they pressed onward.
Eventually, they reached the far side of fighting, where a young man stood with his head bowed, guarded by a handful of elven hunting panthers. As he chanted softly, power pulsed from him in waves, rolling across the battlefield. The cats leapt to attack as Randall and Kirsti rushed toward the elven Mage. Without thinking, Randall shouted a word of power and metal shrapnel sprayed from his extended palm, bringing down several of the cats.
The pair of Mages braced to fight the remaining animals when from somewhere behind them, a large pike flew over the charging cats like a spear and buried itself deeply into the elf’s chest. The elf’s body toppled backward like a ragdoll, instantly snuffing out the spell he was weaving over the battle. Randall glanced behind over his shoulder, spotting Nia standing there, breathing heavily. She must have fought to keep up with them as he and Kirsti slashed their way across the battlefield.
He quickly returned his attention to the panthers, just in time to see one of the large cats leaping directly at his head. He dropped and rolled to one side in the nick of time, saved by his magic-enhanced reflexes. The cat landed just behind him, its momentum carrying it into Nia, bowling her over. The two tumbled to the ground, snarling and shrieking as they rolled around tearing at one another. Randall quickly scrambled to his feet to rush to her aid, realizing as he did so that she wasn’t shrieking at all. She was laughing. The cat rolled off Nia, arching its back and hissing as Randall approached.
“Hush, you,” Nia said playfully, cuffing the panther on the end of its nose. “Randall is a friend. Randall, this is Hunter.” She had used the elvish term for the animal’s name, a word sounding like “halyoor”, but Randall understood the meaning clearly.
Seeing Randall’s bewilderment, she laughed again. “He’s my hunting partner. I have trained him since he was a kitten, though our meeting would have been much different if I hadn’t killed Bran,” she explained, gesturing with her eyes toward the fallen elf.
“You knew him?” Randal asked, glancing around him. Everywhere on the battlefield, the fighting was coming to an end. With the elf’s control gone, most of the rebels were routing, quickly fleeing the field. Others stood confused, as if unsure what to do next.
“I knew him. He’s from Dyffryn. These weren’t rebels, Randall—they were just regular people. Bran had them under compulsion.” She looked repulsed by the idea. “Rhys didn’t even have the courage to send our own people after you. He used the glamoured.” She spit into the dirt, as if the act could clear the foulness of the statement from her mouth.
“Come, we will make sense of this later,” Kirsti said, joining the conversation and placing her hand on Randall’s shoulder. “We must assess our losses, and there are wounded to tend to. You should have that looked at, as well,” she said, nodding toward his left side.
Randall looked down, surprised to see a large gash running from his sternum to his ribs, weeping blood into his tunic. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been cut. He gasped and gripped at the wound with his free hand to stem the flow.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Kirsti chuckled. “Though I imagine it will leave a nice scar.”
“What will happen to these people?” Randall asked, indicating the peasants around him with a wide sweep of his hand.
“If they were truly under compulsion, then they will be tended to and allowed to return to their homes,” Kirsti said. “They took up arms unwillingly, and have already suffered enough.”
The trio picked their way across the field, stepping around the bodies of the fallen. Randall tried not to look too closely at the carnage; he had brought down a fair number of the enemy, and he wasn’t ready to face the fact that the people he had killed had probably been innocents who were fighting against their will. Not looking made it easier not to think too deeply about it.
Part-way across the field, a group of soldiers had surrounded one of the fallen, their voices rising in agitation. Occasionally, one man would reach down toward the splayed body, only to jerk backward a moment later, yelping in frustration. Kirsti pushed two of the guardsmen aside, revealing Berry crouched down low on the inanimate form, spitting and hissing.
In the heat of the moment, Randall had forgotten all about the sprite. He must have joined the fight shortly after Ra
ndall had been blown from the battlements. But he couldn’t understand the donnan’s odd behavior.
“Berry, what are you doing?” he asked as he elbowed his way into the circle for a closer look at the prone figure. It was Eamon! Berry snarled and slashed his claws any time a guardsman tried to draw near.
“Back away! Get back, all of you,” Randall ordered, dropping to his knees behind his old traveling companion.
He held his ear to Eamon’s lips, listening intently. Shallow breath faintly whispered from the boy’s lungs, confirming that he was still alive, though barely so. Bitter shame tore at Randall’s heart. If it weren’t for him, the boy would still be safe at home instead of lying in the dirt flirting with death.
“It’s my fault,” he said, more to himself than to those around him. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
He fished Erliand’s talisman out from under his tunic, pulling the cord over his head and placing the artifact on Eamon’s chest. “You can’t die. I won’t allow it,” he vowed fiercely, filling himself with magic. The soldiers around him began to shift nervously in unconscious reaction to the power he was summoning.
The talisman’s runes began to glow a dull red as Randall pushed magic into the device. Powering an artifact was difficult in even the best of circumstances, but getting even the smallest amount of magic to flow into the battered and abused artifact was a herculean effort. Randall placed his hands over the talisman and bore down with all his might, willing the power he had gathered to feed the runes.
After several long heartbeats, Randall’s hands began glowing, lit up from within by the light radiating from the runes. Eamon’s eyelids began to flicker, and he panted weakly, but Randall did not let up on the pressure, willing all his power into the talisman. There was a sharp cracking sensation, like breaking ice, and the light faded instantly, like a snuffed candle flame. The pressure he fought against was suddenly gone, as if there was no longer anything to press against, and he gasped at the sudden loss of mental resistance.
Magic Astray (The Llandra Saga) Page 9
