An enemy mage, wearing one of those black, hooded cloaks and a cloth mask like a ninja, stood up on Mason’s right from out of nowhere.
He raked their right flank directly with scarlet lightning, ending by focusing the attack directly at the Pistolero.
Mason was caught switching guns and could not respond fast enough. The enemy mage had apparently watched and timed his attack just for such a moment. He might have even counted Mason’s shots.
Thulkara lifted her round shield in front of Mason to protect him at the last instant.
The ground beneath their feet also seemed to explode and burst upwards. Thulkara saved Mason, but both of them were blasted backwards. Even Mason’s horse Winger was knocked screaming off her feet and toppled over, nearly crushing her rider.
The enemy mercs knew enough to hold back for an instant and let their mage do his thing. They didn’t want to be caught up in an attack such as that.
Mason sat up and shook his head, trying to still the dizzy ringing in his ears. He watched, partially stunned and helpless, as the next few seconds of the battle unfolded.
The secondary effects of the magical blast had knocked Blondie off Patton. His crossbow fell out of reach.
This close, the red lightning had blasted the nearest slave wagon behind Mason, exploding it and killing several people and one of the wagon’s horses outright.
Blondie tried to rise and draw his saber, but several enemy archers rushed in and had him dead to rights with their horse bows, in the confusion after the spell.
Their packhorse, Ginger, smashed into those archers on the run, knocking down some even as they all fired. The brave little horse put herself right in front of Blondie to save him.
She took an arrow in the neck, arrows all along her pack saddle and gear, and in her top hindquarters. She screamed and fell back at Blondie’s feet.
Blondie lifted both of his glowing hands and strode forward, enraged. Torrents of burning black fire incinerated the faces and heads right off of the archers and enveloped the enemy mage.
The sudden, withering attack stemmed the enemy rush, and disrupted the enemy mage’s next spell.
The mage fell back, trying to shield himself from Blondie’s sorcerous fire.
The enemy mage looked Blondie right in the eyes and screamed, “Shaeddor!”
Blondie got in close enough to punch the mage in the gut and wind him. When the mage doubled over, Blondie booted him hard in the face, knocking him out.
Two militia troops had the good sense to drag the stunned enemy mage under a wagon.
Blondie tried to cast more magic, and the enemy mercs gasped and drew back, trying to cover up.
But his hands weren’t glowing any longer, and Blondie’s fickle powers no longer obeyed his will.
He was forced to draw his saber.
By then, Mason was back up. He and Thulkara jumped back in beside their friend, and none too soon.
The battle reverted once more into a free-for-all, up close and personal. Mason relied on his Spillers and their lesser fire. He fought back-to-back with Thulkara and Blondie.
He shot mercs at point-blank range. He blasted them right in the face and torso up close.
But in the end, it was Thulkara who saved them all. She met the brunt of the enemy wave attack with an absolute mastery of toe-to-toe combat. She anchored their position and never wavered. Her weapons flashed and slew and maimed with each stroke, with each thrust.
The defenders formed up behind her and protected her back, following her lead as she tore through the enemy ranks like a locomotive covered with steel blades.
For the moment, they were holding their line and even winning. Yet with each second, the enemy infantry reinforcements charged in closer.
A crossbow bolt just missed Mason’s head and grazed his jaw with burning pain.
“Mace!” Thulkara shouted. “Get up in a tree. Focus on reducing that oncoming infantry!”
Mason nodded and struggled to climb. A militia man gave him a boost up, but the fellow took an enemy arrow to the shoulder while doing so.
Once actually in the tree, Mason scrambled up about eighteen feet more to an excellent vantage point.
More arrows zipped through the leaves and sank into the big tree branch in front of him.
He blasted the archers up close first thing.
Then Mason switched guns and launched devastator blasts into the charging ranks of the infantry, focusing on the foremost enemy troops first.
It still looked as if they were all going to be overtaken any second.
Then clouds of arrows rained down and slew the mercs from both flanks.
The militia from Mishawaka raced in from three sides and the enemy saw their own serious disadvantage.
The mercs promptly and wisely withdrew. The few remaining merc cavalry also melted away. Within another minute, the mercs voided the field entirely, leaving behind their dead and wounded.
Blondie begged Thulkara to help him tend Ginger’s wounds, removing the weight of her saddle pack. The Amazon helped him remove the arrows. Both of the packhorse’s wounds looked painful, but not particularly fatal.
They’d have her up and around again in no time. In a way, that little horse had saved them all, and brought out Blondie’s powers for a few precious instants in ways that even he couldn’t manage.
That proved it. Blondie was a sorcerer, similar to what Mason himself was. Yet the question remained.
Whose side had he been on to begin with?
And what had that enemy mage been trying to say to Blondie?
Mason had some trouble climbing back down out of the tree, now that the adrenaline rush of battle ebbed. After days of almost constant running and fighting, he definitely needed both food and rest. He was exhausted.
But he steeled himself, knowing that he could not rest until he made a full report to the militias and their leaders. The humans of Urth and Michiana were up against more than just monsters. And that fact worried him greatly.
He had a definite feeling now that larger wheels were turning and moving against them. They might not have that much time.
It was vital that the defenders learned what was going on around Elkhart. Whatever the enemy prisoners revealed, he and Thulkara could help fill in many of the gaps in their overall knowledge.
Their next task would be to try to help interrogate the enemy mage that they had captured, with Blondie’s surprising assistance. This individual was one of the enemy leaders. Perhaps now, they could get some real answers.
They would also continue searching for a way to contact the other side of the Merge–if there was one.
A sobering thought awoke. What if their foes already knew how to go back and forth between the two sides? The enemy did have powerful magic, after all. That much was very clear.
They seemed to possess great knowledge. Why wouldn’t they know of such ways?
Ginger was back up, nuzzling Blondie with her nose. He spoke to her quietly, trying to sooth her. His face looked very troubled and pale.
“What’s wrong, Blondie? You look like you’re going to be sick. Hey, before you knocked him into next week–what the hell was that mage try to tell you, anyway? Was he trying to cast a spell?”
Blondie frowned and tried to look away. He seemed very uncomfortable suddenly, and rubbed his temples as if they ached. “That mage is in fact a wizard, Mace. And as such, a wizard must speak words to cast spells. But he was not casting any spell–at least, not in the way that he intended.”
Mason took in a breath, since his friend would not. “Then, what did that word mean, Blondie? What was he trying to tell you?”
Blondie held Mason’s eye. “He told me my name, Mace. I saw it in his face when he said it. He knows me. He recognized me. I must…I must speak with him.”
Mason tried to remember the name and how the enemy mage spoke it. “So, your name is–”
His friend lifted his head. “I am Shaeddor–the Black Prince of the Royal House of H
olleth, Lord Sorcerer of the mage nation of Sylurria. And at this moment, my brother, I cannot safely tell you, whether we are meant to be friend…or foe in all of these matters.”
Thulkara came to them, laughing, and clapped both Mason and Blondie eagerly on the back once more. “Victory, my friends!” she shouted. She drove them both to the ground with the force of her elation, flat on their faces.
She yanked them back up like puppets, with many profuse apologies.
Thul warrior goddesses…and Sylurrian princes. What the hell next?
27
Within two hours, Captain David Pritchard’s strike force encircled the western monster camp beyond the abandoned ruins of the South Bend airport and Mayflower Road. They surrounded the camp with three thousand troops and tightened the noose.
The cold spring rains came in once more, complete with thunder and lightning.
“More reports from the scouts, sir,” Lieutenant Craft said softly. “Several troops have been injured and three killed by enemy traps set in the woods. Such traps take the form of stake pits, deadfalls, and trip lines.”
“Damn it,” David muttered. The battle hadn’t even started and they were already losing good people.
“What is wrong?” Jerriel asked. David told her about the traps. Everyone had to be more careful.
They came upon one located nearby–a stake pit set with spikes.
Jerriel nodded. “Torgs use many traps to guard their camps and villages. Bring some of your scouts to me, Daeved.” She shook her staff.
He summoned the nearest scouting team. Four men and one woman in heavy camouflage, all with bows or crossbows and binoculars.
First Jerriel cast a spell all about her, even on David. A band of dark energy covered his eyes. He blinked and found that he could see much more effectively in the darkness. The light around him took on a gray-green hue, similar to night vision.
It was at least as good as seeing in dark twilight. He looked around. The spell affected about forty people within Jerriel’s range, including herself. Now they all had the same band of magical energy over their eyes, giving them the “darksight,” as Jerriel called it.
Then she spoke some more magical words and cast another special spell, just on the four scouts. They gasped slightly. Their bodies turned into what looked to be dark mist. They flowed effortlessly through the woods like silent phantoms.
“A mistshadow spell,” she told David. “Tell one of them to shoot a tree.”
David turned to scouts. “One of you shoot that big oak to our left.”
The mist arrow turned substantial again after it left the range of the spell. It quietly thunked into the tree.
David gaped and turned to Jerriel. “You, are amazing.”
She bowed. “Thanka you. The spell will only last foor one hour.”
He turned to the mistshadow scouts. “That’s all we’ll need. I want you guys to slip in and take out as many of their sentries as you can find. This spell should make that a lot easier. Then help protect the captives once we begin our main assault.”
They nodded. “Will do, sir.” They nodded their thanks to Jerriel.
“Let’s move in folks,” David said. “Everyone keep an eye out for more traps”
Then in a sheltered glade, they stumbled upon a glowing pool of shining, white-green liquid.
Jerriel gasped in glee. She rushed forward while David and the others held back in fear.
After his last experience with one of those strange pools, David wasn’t in a big hurry to take a dip in another.
“Jerriel, what are these pools?”
“Magic. Wild Magic. Concentrated magic. There are many kinds from what I have seen. Sometimes yoo can tell what kind from the aura.”
She twirled the end of her staff above the pool and spoke some words in her language. The staff drew tendrils of the glowing magic up into it, sucking up the energy. But the water remained and ceased to glow.
“I have learned how to absoorb the magic foor later use,” she whispered.
“Captain Pritchard,” one of the troops said in a low voice. “There’s more over here.”
They slid over that way. Sure enough, another small glowing pool lay there. This one had a pink aura.
Jerriel went to suck up the energy, but one of the troops touching the water exclaimed, “It healed my hand. I had a nasty bruise and several bad cuts and scrapes from the fighting last night. Now they’re gone!”
David blinked and held Jerriel back this time. He produced a plastic military canteen of water and emptied it. Then he filled it with the pink glowing liquid. Others did the same until they drained the tiny pool completely.
“Jerriel, do you think this magic water is safe to drink?”
She held her hands up and shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t be sure, and we doon’t have time to study it. If it is Wild Magic, who knows?”
“Well, pass the word. We’ll experiment with this stuff later. Nobody drink any, for right now.”
The message came back from the scouts. They’d taken out all of the sentries they could find. No alarms had sounded, so they must have done a good job of things.
“Move up,” David said. “Our priorities and objective remain the same. Locate the captives and secure them first. Then we’ll put down the enemy. Pass the word.”
Moving in close became pretty grim. The enemy hordes fed off anything that was meat. Nasty bone piles and dung piles seemed to be everywhere, along with old fire pits. The monsters ate people and left the bony hands, feet, and heads.
David saw the remains of a dead little blonde girl, about four or five years old and wished he hadn’t. Her hair was still in doggie ears.
The look of terror and pain on her poor, dead little face, staring up in the rain, shocked and tormented him.
The image of that little kid, eaten down to the bone, burned into his mind like a dark curse. He never wanted to see anything like that again. But he and the militia saw plenty of victims, just like that all the way in.
First it shocked and sickened them–then those feelings turned to rage. They couldn’t take the enemy down hard enough, or fast enough.
David gripped his crossbow hard and sighed quietly, trying to control his fury. Even Jerriel sensed his distress and clutched his arm briefly. He shook his head in disgust.
He probably didn’t need to, but he passed the word anyway. The troops looked as grim and angry as he was.
“No quarter once we attack. Kill every damn one of these bastards! I want them all cut down.”
Every trooper around him looked just as pissed off and filled with wrath as he was. Many wept openly; some had quietly vomited.
The monster camp looked even worse up close–if that could be imagined. It stank like shit and death, even in the rain.
That included several hundred wet, shivering Urth people, penned up and picketed out in the open, with dozens of monster guards armed with spears, bows, and makeshift weapons surrounding them. The humans huddled together in the cold rain, trying to protect the children.
There were a lot of children. The enemy seemed to prefer them.
It made sense in, sick way. As prey, children would be weaker and less able to resist or escape than adults.
And from a monster standpoint, their meat would also be more tender.
David saw all that he needed to see. Half-eaten, half-stripped bodies of all ages hung roasting over several sheltered fire pits.
Some of them were still partially alive.
Slow cooking humans. The smell was awful, like burning hair, blood, and roasting hog mixed with urine and dung. No one would ever forget that night.
Just before David signaled the attack, their wave of silent, enchanted scouts swept over the guards and captured a big section of the pens. Then the shouting began.
“Attack!” David yelled. “Kill every monster. Save the captives!”
Militia shot the enemy in their sleep.
They drilled arrows and bolts through them as th
e foe started to rise.
They shot them down when they scattered and ran.
After three devastating volleys, the remaining foes tried to regroup and push toward the rear to break out.
That was not going to happen.
David already had his crossbow secured behind him. His longsword and tomahawk came out. He was out for blood, and charged into the camp with his forces shouting on either side.
An enormous, armored gozog, ten feet tall, emerged out of an earthen cave in the hillside. He wielded a gigantic warhammer in one hand and munched on a baby still in diapers. The little white feet slipped down his gullet. His eyes gleamed red with hate.
He smiled a broad, toothy grin and flatted several troopers with a sweep of his massive hammer.
Jerriel rose up in the air. Her staff glowed red, the symbols along its length pulsing and shifting. She swung her staff forward with both hands and unleashed a blast of red flame with a cry of strange words.
A whirlwind of fire engulfed the big gozog and his mor-kahl guards. Then the whirlwind exploded in a vortex of blasting flame.
Even David pulled back and shielded his face from the heat.
But as the tempest of flame cleared, a big stone half the size of a person shot out, grazed Jerriel’s head, and knocked her out of the air.
She toppled back into the darkness behind them.
“Jerriel!” David cried.
28
The first bounty hunters tracked Mason down in Mishawaka after the initial militia debriefing there. That only took five hours.
Transcripts of the data would be rushed to South Bend.
The enemy mage was still bedridden. He’d cracked his head when he dropped and had a concussion–as well as some nasty burns. It could be days before he might be up for questioning.
Mason was in the process of walking across a street find a place for him and his friends to eat, two blocks over from a militia base set up at the Post Office. That was no easy task. Food was scarce, and as it turned out, Thulls apparently ate quite a bit–a lot, as it turned out.
Several places had been contracted to provide feeding stations for the militia. Mason carried a writ from a Mishawaka general allowing them to get food and drink anywhere in town. But the nearest food stations all made and kept their own hours. And the debriefing had gone on for hours.
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