The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2)

by Melissa McShane

  The soldiers were making a lot of noise, shouting and cheering, with women’s voices rising above theirs. It felt like a celebration, but one I was on the outside of. Not that I wasn’t happy we’d won, I just felt worn out and empty. I think most of that was having used so many pouvrin in so relatively short a time, but it also felt a little like how I feel after I learn a new pouvra, flat, as if nothing interesting will ever happen again.

  But I smiled and accepted congratulations. All of us mages were heroes today, especially among those who’d seen the destruction outside Binna and those who’d been on the periphery of the enemy mages’ attacks. I didn’t tell them we’d been successful largely because they hadn’t known to expect us. Many of the enemy soldiers escaped to run back to the God-Empress and would certainly tell what they’d seen, and even if the Castaviran mages didn’t know what to expect from us, they’d definitely know to be prepared with defensive kathanas.

  That makes me sound more discouraged than I am. The mages worked well together and independently, and didn’t panic when they saw they’d killed someone, and the spies had been useful, and much as I grieve over Paddrek, it’s true our casualties could have been far worse. Everyone else was just as cheerful over dinner, cheerful enough that I didn’t give them the “let’s not celebrate too soon” speech I’d been working on. Time enough for that tomorrow morning.

  I just got back from talking to Mattiak, who behaved exactly as if nothing awkward had ever happened between us. He congratulated me and the mages, said something about how effective they’d been, and then said, “It’s going to be harder next time, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “When will that next time be? Soon?”

  “We’ll encounter the main body of their army in a day or so,” Mattiak said. “But there may be conflict sooner than that if they have more divisions coming up from the southeast, flanking the army. We have four companies spread out in that direction with instructions to send runners back if they encounter the enemy.”

  “Will they attack if they do?” I said.

  “Better for them to retreat and draw them out, away from the security of the other troops,” he said. “If we have to fight a battle on two fronts, which I think we won’t, we’ll want to crush one of those forces quickly and see if we can’t turn that attack back on them. If that happens, your mages are going to be key to that defeat.”

  I said, “They’ll be ready. Even the spies.”

  “I may have a different purpose for them this time,” he said, “depending on what news Nessan and his men bring back.”

  “You could have sent us to spy on the G—the enemy’s forces,” I said.

  “Time enough for that,” he said cryptically, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation. I wanted to hurry away before it became intimate, so naturally I tripped over my stool and fell. Mattiak helped me up with a smile that said he was thinking about flirting with me again, which flustered me, and I almost ran out of his tent and to my own.

  I thought I was going to be able to handle him, but that was when I thought all I had to worry about was an attempt at physical intimacy, which I still don’t think he’s going to try. No, it’s those intimate glances, the meaningful smiles, everything he doesn’t say that nevertheless speaks volumes. It makes me feel so uncomfortable because he wants something from me he’s never going to get, and I wish he could understand that. I wish we’d never become friends. A professional relationship would be so much better for both of us.

  9 Seresstine, noonish

  We’ve found the God-Empress’s army. It’s not nearly as big as I remember it being from Calassmir. That could be because they’re bunched up along the highway and not spread out, and of course they’ve lost that division we scattered, and there might still be a division or two south of here, though the companies Mattiak sent that way have been reporting in regularly and haven’t seen any sign of enemy soldiers. Our soldiers seem confident of our chances, I hope not overconfident.

  The mages are…not subdued, exactly, but they’re not as eager for battle as they were yesterday. Paddrek’s death hit us all hard. I didn’t realize he and Neomae were moving toward a relationship, not that I would have since I just don’t pick up on those things, and she’s been despondent over things she never had the chance to say. I know how she feels, a little, though at least I’ll have the chance to say them to Cederic someday.

  They’re far enough away, and it’s late enough in the day, that we’re going to look for a good position and wait until morning. Though they aren’t advancing either, so maybe we’ll move again tomorrow. I wish—no, I don’t wish I understood military strategy, it’s just that I feel at sea, not knowing what’s best for us to do, or what Mattiak’s going to want from his mage spies. I haven’t seen him at all today, not that I was looking for him, but he generally finds a way to be near me, so it was a relief not to have his eyes on me all the time. I suppose there’s nothing to do now but wait.

  10 Seresstine, too early

  I’m so tired I can barely see to write, but I feel obligated to record everything that happened, for Rutika’s sake if nothing else. After I finished my last entry, I sat with the mages and talked tactics, and had dinner, and it was all pleasantly boring. Especially since Mattiak didn’t send for me.

  But as we were finishing our dinner, Nessan showed up and grabbed my arm and marched me away. I slid free and said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “You didn’t tell me you’d been in the enemy camp at Calassmir,” he said.

  “Why would you care?” I said.

  “Because we’ve found something we don’t understand,” he said, “and you might be able to explain it.”

  I felt a moment’s irrational fear that I’d been discovered, then reminded myself he couldn’t be talking about my secret knowledge of the God-Empress. “What is it?” I said.

  “Come with me,” he said, and walked away without either grabbing me again or waiting for me to follow. I had to jog to keep up with him.

  We went to his tent—not his personal tent, the place from which he directs his spies. It’s dark and smells of mildew and the roof leaks, and it’s the most slovenly tent I’ve seen in the Balaenic Army camp, but he seems to like it. He’s got a table that’s as elderly as the tent that’s always covered with scraps of paper, some of it dirty, but what he showed me was a charcoal sketch on clean white paper. “Did you see any of these in Calassmir?” he demanded.

  I nodded. It was a war wagon, if somewhat distorted and out of proportion. “I’ve heard they’re like giant rifles,” I said.

  “Right. Some kind of projectile, anyway,” he said. “They shoot balls that fragment on impact and turn everything in a five-foot radius to paste. And their range is beyond even what your warrior mages can reach, which makes them safe from fire or mind-moving. The bastards have fifteen of these they’re going to turn on us as soon as they get them into position. Looks like they weigh more than a ton, and they don’t have horses pulling them.”

  “How do you know that?” I said.

  Nessan crumpled the paper and tossed it at the wall, where it rebounded and fell into a dirty patch (no rugs for Nessan, he’d probably think them a sign of weakness). “That they’ll attack?” he said. “We can’t fight in the dark any more than their soldiers can, but those weapons are like a drunk man swinging a club—doesn’t have to be accurate, just has to be close. So they can mark a target spot before the sun goes down and keep lobbing those projectiles into our camp. If they start pounding on us with those things, we either have to advance or retreat, and they’re counting on us not wanting to advance into true God knows what kind of nighttime combat. So they’re going to force us to retreat, which loses us our position, gives us no chance to rest, and puts us in a weakened position when morning comes and they can pursue us.”

  “You want to know how to destroy them,” I said.

  “You’re smarter than you look,” he said with the twist of his lips that passes for
a wry smile with him. “Disable them, if we can’t outright destroy them. And soon.”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “I got a good look at them, because I was curious,” I said, which was one hundred percent true. “You know their mages have to draw on those boards to work magic, right? Well, these things have a sort of plate with a, um, design or picture or something like the ones they draw on their boards. I think they paint over the lines to make the magic work and fire the projectiles.” That was fifty percent guess, because those th’an might be to make it move, but they’re different enough from the ones on the collennas I’ve seen that it was a guess I felt comfortable with.

  “Interesting, but not totally helpful,” Nessan said. “Didn’t you see any weaknesses we can exploit?”

  “That is the weakness,” I said. “If we damage the plate, the picture won’t be accurate anymore, and the thing won’t work. Smash it, gum up the lines with rocks or something, tear the whole thing off. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.”

  Nessan had begun looking into the distance past my shoulder as I spoke. He was silent for a few seconds when I finished, then said, “Get the wallowers (this is what he affectionately calls our spies) and meet me at the southern picket line in ten minutes. Tell them to dress for speed, not warmth. No flapping coats, understand?”

  “Since this is not my first time doing this, of course I do,” I mock-snarled at him, and he returned the expression.

  The spies were excited when I told them to get ready, and we reached the picket line two minutes early, about half an hour before sunset. Nessan was there exactly at the ten minute mark. He sneered at us, which is another way he shows approval, along with insults and sarcasm, though he’s not as good at the latter as Cederic is. He was lugging a big canvas sack that clanked when he dropped it on the frozen ground in front of us. He didn’t look winded, but his breath was coming more quickly, making little puffs of white when he exhaled. That should have warned me. I was stupid not to remember there are so many ways you can be detected that have nothing to do with sight.

  But reproaches aren’t going to change the past. Nessan dug into his bag and began handing things out: claw hammers, sacks of sticky mud that on inspection turned out to actually be wet clay, big metal tent spikes, and chisels. He explained what I’d told him about the th’an plates on the war wagons, then added, “We don’t know what will work best to disable them, so you’ve got options. You’ll work in pairs.

  “Alessabeka and Rutika, you’re going to circle around to the north, and Tobiak and Relania, to the south. Sesskia and I will drive up the middle. One of you distracts the operators—there’s only two to a weapon, one to load, one to work the magic—and the other disables it. Get as many of them as you can, then pull out before they get their mages involved.” He sighed, and a whole cloud of white mist blew from his lips. “This is what you trained for. Make me proud.”

  They all nodded or murmured assent, and we headed out through the camp and past the front lines, where we concealed ourselves and separated. I’ve never felt so anxious in my life. It was like when our warrior mages faced battle for the first time, except this was worse because stealth and cunning were the only weapons these mages had, and as good as they’d become, they had almost no experience. To distract myself, I said to Nessan, “You’d better not give me away with all your tramping around. You hardly look like a Cas—an enemy soldier.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “You want to distract, or sabotage?”

  “I’d better distract, because you’re stronger than me and I think smashing the plate is the best solution,” I said.

  “Weakling,” he said.

  “Oaf,” I said. “Here, take the tools.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “You clank when you walk.”

  “I’m surprised you can hear that, what with you going deaf in your old age,” I said.

  We kept up the insults for about half a minute more, then went silent as we neared the camp. We came wide around its flank, me following Nessan as he made a path among the tents. He’s good at using shadows and those gaps between places no one uses because they’re not on a direct route to anywhere. He’s also good at looking like he belongs when he can’t avoid being hidden. I know I couldn’t have walked through the Castaviran camp without my stolen uniform, which by the way I was wearing, just in case.

  The war wagons were still being maneuvered into place when we arrived at their position, which was a higher piece of land that curved through the camp from north to south. It began sloping downward about two-thirds of the way into the camp, and since the war wagons were lined up along the ridge, that meant Nessan and I, and Tobiak and Relania probably, were in the middle of the God-Empress’s camp, and Nessan and I, going for the middle of that line, were heading even deeper into it.

  We walked along the low ridge and observed. Each war wagon had a white-coated mage behind it, drawing th’an in the grooves of the shining brass plates fastened to the rear. The th’an propelled the war wagons very slowly across the matted dead grass, which made me wonder why the war wagons weren’t collennas, to move by themselves. I hadn’t noticed those plates when I’d explored the chamber of death, but I’d been rattled, so I don’t blame myself too much. Each war wagon was accompanied by a wheeled bin filled with projectiles, pushed by a soldier. It was all happening so slowly I chafed at the delay, but there was nothing we could do about it except wait for them to get into position.

  Nessan walked past the war wagons, and I followed him to a spot near some of the command tents and looked around. The God-Empress’s standard was about fifty feet away, which made me wonder where she was. Directing their attack? Demanding some irrational service that would slow or hamper that attack? I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I saw her. No, that’s not true, I knew what I’d do, I’d stand there and let her walk past. Mattiak’s right, killing her wouldn’t solve anything. And it’s not my duty.

  Eventually the battle mages found positions they liked, but then they spent another handful of eternities making their war wagons’ barrels tilt up and down, using th’an to make a glowing amber circle they kept consulting—I think it helped them aim at their target, and knowing that made me even more anxious about what would happen if we failed.

  Nessan whispered, “Stay here. I have to move or I’ll be conspicuous,” and then he was gone, leaving me with nothing to do but watch and plan ways to distract or overcome the mages. The mage operating the war wagon nearest me took her seat, and Nessan wasn’t back. The young man with the bin full of projectiles heaved one up and slid it into the funnel at the back of the war wagon. Nessan wasn’t back.

  I leaned forward on the balls of my feet. I couldn’t do this alone, I didn’t even have the tools. The fire pouvra wasn’t hot enough to melt brass, damn it, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do short of killing both of them, which would ruin the whole plan.

  Then a panicked, horrified thought struck me. Only the green-eyed mages could work magic. And mages wouldn’t need the grooves to scribe the correct th’an. Our plan was useless. I looked up and down the line and, of course, saw nothing out of the ordinary. I had no way of warning our mages they were about to risk their lives for nothing. We were just going to have to go through with it and hope we all survived.

  Nessan still wasn’t back. I had to watch, helpless, as the mage dipped her brush into the tankard fused to the barrel’s side and brought it out dripping with gleaming silver. Then, to my surprise, she swept the brush through the grooves, a tangle of graceful movements, and the wintry evening was ripped open by the loudest noise I’d ever heard, louder than the thunder that follows lightning striking just feet from where you stand. I thought the sound echoed, but it was just more of the explosions, farther away, and now I was fighting to control my panic. I had nearly resolved to attack the mage and to hell with the plan when suddenly Nessan was at my ear, saying, “Do it.”

  The battle mage had a brushful of silver again, and I used the mind-movin
g pouvra to snap the brush in half, just in case. Then I pulled myself up on the back of the war wagon, kicking the boy in the face as he was about to load his projectile, looked inside the mage’s neck and found the same veins I’d used to subdue Norsselen. The mage toppled, and I heard a muted clang as Nessan wedged the chisel into one of the grooves and struck it hard with the hammer, making it peel up into an unrecognizable mess. “Move,” he said, and I leapt down and raced after him to the next wagon southward.

  The noise was incredible. It felt like being inside a giant drum that wouldn’t stop beating. I didn’t even try to tell Nessan what I’d figured out; he couldn’t have heard me, and it wouldn’t have changed anything. We repeated our technique again, and again, before anyone realized the drumbeat was lessening. I couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the war wagons, but I saw soldiers running to find out why the war wagon mages were unconscious.

  The fourth wagon was unoccupied, or rather the mage was off his seat and shouting something unintelligible over the noise. He was pacing, moving enough that I had to grab him to hold him still enough to knock him unconscious. His eyes went wide, and he took hold of me in a way that told me he saw past the concealment. “Who are you?” he said.

  This time, I managed not to say “none of your business.” I kept my head even though my heart was pounding with fear, and without a word sent him unconscious. He fell, nearly taking me with him, and it took far too long for me to extricate myself from his grip. Nessan had to pull me to my feet, shouting, “One more, then we run!”

  “We need to warn the others!” I shouted back.

  “They know what to do! Give them a little credit!” Nessan said, and dragged me—this was when I realized I’d dropped concealment, and I decided it didn’t matter anymore. We disabled our fifth one and kept running.

  We passed one of the other war wagons, and I saw an unconscious battle mage on the ground and another one perched on the seat, painting rapidly and swearing (I think; it was too loud to hear). The war wagon was silent. I stopped and circled around to where I could see what he was doing. The brass plate was a smeared mess of clay filling the grooves, and silver paint coated it above the engraved th’an. As I watched, the mage tried again to paint the activation th’an on the flat, gleaming surface; nothing happened.