"They didn't bow last spring when they killed a squad of warlocks and soldiers," Talithia responded refusing to stop.
Sighing at his precocious niece, Thielius nearly ordered her to desist as he said, "Please, Talithia, you begin to give me a headache. I was having such a nice sparring session with Turless too. Perhaps you would rather sit and watch us. Turless and I are still somewhat beginners at this, but we could show you some of what we have learned. Combining weapons training with simple, quick spells like Southwall's mages have been doing for well over a hundred years can be extended to even some of our more difficult spells. It is just in how you tie a word of power to a particular choice of magic."
It was Talithia's turn to sigh at her uncle. "You are dodging my answers, uncle; but I suppose that we did come to see this battle mage style of magic. If it is so strong, Soleste could benefit from training in it as well.
"Don't think that I won't try to get more out of you, you old elf," the girl added sarcastically.
"Old? I am only a hundred and one years old now. I have barely reached my prime, child. Perhaps to one as young as you, a hundred is old, but your grandparents are quite a bit older than that and would argue with you also."
Holdy and Turless listened to the elf throwing around his age and thought he should have felt old. As a human, he would likely even be dead at a hundred, but to an elf a century was like a drop in the bucket of time.
Talithia kept hold of the boy as she found a bench for them to share. Thielius and Turless replaced their helmets and began to use spells that Holdy had never heard simplified this way or seen them used as these two began to show their observers how battle mage magic actually worked.
"Torva, do you have any news? Have you found any more spies since the others escaped?" a wide shouldered half orc dressed in the black leather armor of the wizard hunters asked the elf in front of him.
To the rest of Ensolus, this would seem improbable. An elf submitting to an orc's rank as an officer, especially an elf from a good family like Torva's, would likely never be seen anywhere else. The army had some orc officers that had risen through the ranks and General Corven was half orc and half human. The general was one of the emperor's advisors along with a half elf, General Amelyer. Humanity often formed the glue to crossing the differences between the races, though for some reason they couldn't always get along with each other strangely enough.
Torva noted a minor level of magic in the captain. As a warlock of reasonable power, normally his kind wouldn't have to serve under a man with lesser magic; but in the wizard hunters magic meant little. It was their foe and the Southwall wizards their prey. Man and monster served using special gear and techniques to deal with those who had magic.
"We've been unable to find those who escaped. It looks like they used gate magic and had the ability to close the gates behind them well enough that our portal wizards were unable to reopen them again.
"Any other rumors we've chased since then have led us nowhere. A few houses that should have been abandoned revealed limited activity. I would almost guess that someone was leaving us just enough to thumb their noses at us when we still keep finding dead ends."
Rorsted frowned. "What kind of spy gives you enough clues to follow a trail just to lead you to a dead end?"
"One who has probably done this a long time," the elf replied. Every lead they followed practically had a signature to it as if the ones behind it wanted them to keep following leads without actually giving them anything. A thought popped into his mind and Torva added, "It is almost like they want to keep us busy chasing leads that will get us nowhere."
"Why would they waste their time doing that?" the orc asked and his frown seemed frozen in place like a curse.
A moment's pause led the warlock to say, "Maybe because it isn't a waste of time at all?"
"Can't you answer a question without giving me another, Torva? I know you warlocks like your mysteries, but we don't have time for this," the captain grumped at him.
Sighing, Torva wondered if it was that the orc wasn't intelligent enough to follow his logic or simply too inflexible in his thinking. "Maybe they have something else planned that is being covered by these maneuvers. We caught a handful of spies once, so handing us these leads gives our men the confidence to chase them. Meanwhile, they are doing whatever they have planned elsewhere.
"We look one direction and they act in another."
A low rumble of a groan echoed in the captain's chest. "It sounds like it will take a wizard to follow the trail in order to turn it against them in turn. Keep trying to get ahead of this and bring in whoever you need to and can trust.
"The city still believes that no enemy can enter Ensolus. We can't let them lose faith in us and the emperor now. We almost have Litsarin. The North Wall has been broken once as well. By spring the pits will have churned out more soldiers and hopefully they will remove the threat from Litsarin before breaking down their wall again."
Torva merely nodded before giving a salute. He knew Captain Rorsted wasn't stupid, but he feared that men like him wouldn't be flexible enough to deal with what their enemy was raising against them.
Ensolus had been breached for the first time in centuries and in spite of their minor victories, the war seemed to be slowly turning against them. It was subtle in some ways and blatantly thrust in his face in others. Like the breach of their defenses, Litsarin kept getting help using gate magic. If their enemy was beginning to decode their spells, this war was going to become much less certain even with the emperor's power to back them.
Chapter 4- Dance Partners
Megan walked beside Torva as they passed to the north of the orc ghetto. The creatures were so numerous that they had two major communities in the cave. One lay far to the west in what many called the 'monster sector'. It was near the breeding pits where those being brought to term were birthed full grown. Orcs, goblins and the other larger creatures in the Dark One's army all had created communities that touched and even overlapped in places in the west. No humans or elves chose to live there at all. That was a land of monsters.
An expanse of land separated the Monster Sector from the spires and other buildings occupied by the upper echelon of the military who lived closer to the open mouth of the cave city. Elves could be found there as well where the sun could be seen from the right angle. The sky was there above the defensive walls and below the top of the cave mouth fifty or sixty feet above the ground. It gave the elves, mixed with many human officers and their families, a feel of the outside even within the confines of the mountain's stone.
It was the height of winter and cold, so Megan wore a tunic dress over pants dyed dark blue. Her coat was gray and covered the patterned dress with a background of matching dark blue. The girl would have held his hand, even though they were in public, if it wasn't so cold.
"Why did I need to go with you again?" she asked as her teeth rattled in her jaw from the cold. With arms crossed, her hands gripped her sides as if they could hold her heat in with her slender appendages.
"Rorsted said that I could take someone that I trust to help me search for spies. I trust you and you look human enough to pass for one in the slums."
"I've never looked for spies before. You know I could be a liability since I don't know how to act on such a mission."
Torva reached over placing his hand over her forearm. He had been using his pockets quite often on their walk, but he hoped to share confidence with that touch. "You don't have to do anything besides being my date. We'll go to a couple taverns where they usually have music and dancing. Being a couple is all we have to be. I'll be by your side the whole time... well in front while we're dancing actually, but you know what I mean."
"How is that going to help find your spies?"
He found it interesting that she made them his responsibility when the whole city was in danger, including wizards like Megannah.
"It might not find them, but the right kind of inquiries might give me some clues to th
eir whereabouts. Bars are good places to find people willing to talk about people that don't quite belong."
After a moment, Megan asked, "Is it true about the escape from the dungeon? The rumors say that someone broke in or broke out or both."
Torva gave a noncommittal grunt. "I've heard those rumors too."
The pretty woman's eyes narrowed. While Torva was good at lying to people or at least being evasive enough to avoid giving them an answer, Megan knew him too well to be deceived often. "So it's true."
"I didn't say anything other than that I have heard the rumors. Whether such a thing has happened, I...," he glanced to the wizard with her strawberry blonde hair and piercing gray eyes and knew that his attempt to keep her uncertain wasn't working. Giving an annoyed sigh, the hunter confessed, "I don't truly know everything about it, but from what I do know someone broke in using a portal spell to remove Southwall spies that had been caught and stored in the emperor's dungeon. We've found signs of spies since, but have been unable to capture anymore."
"So now I get to play your date while you have to look for the spies everyone believes are still around... and what did they have to gain by such a desperate plan anyway?"
"Well that question I can answer without knowing for certain from their mouths. The emperor's torturers are excellent at getting information out of their prisoners when it's needed. Whoever had the skill and bravery to risk entering the emperor's dungeon, must have believed it was worth it to get them all out. Only one or two were killed in their breakout attempt, though a few guards were killed as well."
"And probably the rest died after they told their story as a warning to the other guards," Megan added with a tight lipped frown.
Again Torva sighed. "You shouldn't talk that way in public. People will think that you are a sympathizer or perhaps even someone with a rebellious nature if you don't agree with the emperor's tactics."
The girl swiveled to step in front of him before stopping the wizard hunter with her hands resting against his chest. The space between them was minimal, though their bulky jackets virtually formed an armored barrier between the two. "Well, the only one near is you. You don't think that I am a sympathizer or rebel, do you, Torva?"
He smiled as his hands moved to hold her waist. Even through her jacket, Megan's figure could excite him the man thought. "Well, you might make a good spy. I can't seem to keep anything from you and you are quite the seductress when you want to be too. Maybe I need to watch you closer from now on?"
"You can watch me as closely as you want in our room. I'll bare all for you and you can decide if I can out lie you," the beautiful wizard said with a smirk.
"Hmm, well then we should quickly make our search here so we'll have more time later then. I like the idea of your challenge," Torva replied chuckling at the young woman's play with her words.
Pouting slightly at being put off, Megan said, "Well at least we can get out of the cold for awhile in one of these taverns, but you know that I would rather be warm in my room."
The room that the two shared most of the time was Megan's private chamber at the school of magic. She was still too young to have earned enough money to rent a place of her own. Some wizards with less talent never did leave the school dorms. They weren't valuable enough to get paid more to leave.
Finding a couple drunken men stumbling along past them just as a door opened letting out the noise of conversations and music, Torva escorted the woman inside the first tavern. It was louder than the woman was used to during most of her day. She amended the thought in her head. The explosions of spells in the training courtyards could be loud as well, but the noises would stop often enough while the students practiced. This noise just went on and on. Even when the musicians stopped playing, people continued talking loudly keeping the room at a roar almost continually.
"It's so loud," she complained leaning towards Torva. His nod was more obvious than any words so he said nothing else. "How will you ever hear enough to get answers to your questions?"
Taking her hand the hunter led the beautiful woman into the dancers. They had yet to remove their jackets, but the cold lingered on them as Torva led Megan in their first dance. A song moving at medium speed, the man was still able to move close enough to speak quietly in her ear, "Don't worry about how I do it, but I will. Meanwhile continue being beautiful to distract the other men for me. Making them jealous wouldn't hurt either."
His laughter tickled her ear before his lips touched her cheek causing Megan to redden slightly. Public displays of affection were rare among wizards. The fact that there were less women practicing magic was only part of the fact. Like his joke said, some men saw a woman as a possession to be had. Jealousy between warlocks had led to more than one lover disappearing because of a rival, even if the woman desired the first man more. She supposed that some of the women had done similar mischief to remove rivals from a particularly powerful warlock as well.
Of course, there were those wizards who also saw a relationship as a weakness. Extorting a rival by threatening his family could often get someone ahead or force someone to serve them.
By the second song Megan was getting warm with her jacket still on, so Torva helped her remove the outer layer revealing the low cut of her dress. While a tunic cut was pretty common, revealing cleavage was less so, especially in winter. She had worn this particular dress to be that distraction as Torva had asked. Why such simple things as her breasts could draw a man's attention so easily was something that Megan couldn't truly explain? She knew that they worked, even when she covered up more; but the wizard knew her beauty could soften most male minds.
Torva hung up their coats before leading her onto the dance floor once more. By the third song, she was beginning to get a little warm. It was surprising after the long cold walk to the tavern.
While he went to the bar to get her a drink, Megan stood beside one of the tall tables. There were stools there as well, but the woman wasn't ready to sit yet.
She had barely been left alone when a couple seedy looking men moved to surround the small circle of the table.
"Well, you certainly brighten up this place, beautiful," the first man said. His words sent the smell of ale towards her delicate nose causing it to wrinkle in distaste at the smell making her turn from the man towards his friend.
"I know that I have never seen her before in here. I would certainly remember someone who looked like her. That face and that figure, I know I won't forget you any time soon," the second man said leering at the pretty girl.
"But that says you will still forget sometime in the future," Megan replied to the second man just nice enough to seem flirtatious. "Should I be disappointed that I am not someone that you will never forget?"
The second man looked surprised by her retort as his friend laughed at his expense. "If you'll dance with me, I will never forget your beauty," he amended quickly.
"Oh, well that is better, but I am a bit warm. Perhaps you two would buy me a drink?" she asked as her fingers moved to the front of her dress and tugged in a couple quick repetitions as if to cool her body while teasing their eyes with the amount of cleavage she was still showing off.
Their eyes widened and the first man asked, "What would you like to have to drink? You look like someone who might drink wine."
The second man shook his head and countered, "Perhaps the lady would prefer something a little stronger?"
"How about a vodkey with some prapple juice added to it for flavor?" Megan asked with a sweet smile. Vodkey could be strong and a woman suggesting that drink might be more susceptible to darker impulses after just two or three drinks even if they weren't a lightweight.
The men smiled eagerly and she could see the dark thoughts in their eyes. "I'll be right back, miss," the first man agreed starting to hurry towards the bar. His friend followed trying to jockey for position to get there first as he argued that he would buy her the drink instead.
Before the two men had even reached the bar, while they conti
nued to fight over who would buy her drink; a new male voice spoke from just behind the woman before passing to stand beside the table. "That was very well played, miss."
She looked up to a much taller man. He had a well groomed beard that was as brown as his hair, though Megan was pretty certain he was much older than she was. He was good looking, but not so good looking as to be one of those who abused his looks, she thought.
"What do you mean?" the girl asked trying to pretend that she hadn't played the two men against each other just to be rid of them. By the time they could buy a drink, Torva would likely return to steal her away again. She might even get a free drink or two out of them just for fun.
"A pretty girl pretending to be much less intelligent than she is can use her beauty to make other men fight over her. I suppose less intelligent women can too, though only an intelligent woman could make them fight over her and get rid of them at the same time."
"What if the unintelligent beauty happened to do the same thing by accident? Wouldn't that make it harder to be certain if she is in fact intelligent and not just lucky enough to have escaped a boring pair of men?"
The man appeared to consider the idea and nodded his head. "But only an intelligent woman would ask that question."
She waited for him to hit on her. It was expected and another reason why the woman was glad that she could hide away in the school of magic and avoid the attention of similar men. Even warlocks and wizards had fawned over her throughout the beauty' life. It wasn't conceit that she knew she was pretty, but at times it could be a curse as well.
Battle Mage Broken Empire Page 5
