“Common light infantry,” Noutha shrugged. “It means ‘mace-wielders’, if you want to get technical, but they’re usually armed with a javelin or spear and a sword, now. Udateli are the non-commissioned officers. The ones in charge. They don’t usually have a spear. In my command, they used a talisman to denote their office, but these scrugs are using tabards.”
“You think that they’ll be wary?” Rondal asked, curious. If anyone knew how the enemy fought, it would be Noutha.
“Those fellows,” she said, nodding toward the outpost, “are pulling guard duty on the deserted arse-end of this island. That’s likely why the Dradrien were bivouacked here,” she added. “They aren’t expecting trouble. They captured a prisoner when they weren’t expecting it – that’s where their focus will be. All the ruckus is on the other end of the island. Their biggest pain-in-the-arse, the Dradrien, just marched away. They’re going to be sloppy and relaxed, and totally unprepared for a surprise assault,” she predicted.
“So, a frontal assault would actually not be that hard,” reasoned Rondal.
“It’s actually the simplest solution to the problem,” she proposed. “Look, the moment there’s word of attack, those scrugs are going to go rushing outside to see what’s going on. If they’re lucky they’ll remember to leave a guard for the prisoner. Scrugs are curious, as curious as people, but they’re far more undisciplined. It takes a lot of effort to enforce anything like real military order on them, believe me. You often have to resort to magic to get them to work together. Or raise them from pups, crushing the undisciplined from the ranks.
“But as soon as the alarm goes up, everyone will want to fight. That’s how their psychology works,” she promised. “There’s no glory in guard duty.”
“All right,” Rondal sighed. “But instead of all three of us rushing in at once, how about I let you two have your way with the place, and I’ll observe and act in reserve?”
“I don’t need the help,” agreed Noutha. “You ready, Haystack? Cat?”
“I’m all aquiver,” Tyndal agreed.
“Ready,” assured Atopol, pulling his dark hood over his head.
“Then . . . charge?” Rondal commanded.
Both warmagi chuckled as they turned and began walking toward the outpost, casting protective spells and engaging their warmagic enchantments. Both were justifiably confident in their approach – Rondal knew they were two of the better warmagi in the Kingdom, armed with irionite and the most advanced enchantments Sevendor could produce.
Atopol was nowhere to be seen . . . which was expected. The Cat of Enultramar crept among the shadows of the twisted land silently, enshrouded by shadowmagic and informed by a lifetime of practical experience.
Rondal had grown fond of the white-haired thief over the course of the last year, regardless of his relationship to his sister. In many ways Atopol was the opposite of Tyndal’s boisterous personality and compulsive behavior. But he shared Tyndal’s humor and his bravado.
Tyndal began the assault with a wide-ranging attack from just out of bowshot, peppering the front of the outpost, where the gurvani gathered, with a hail of spellfire from his mageblade. The bodies of the unsuspecting gurvani suddenly twitched and contorted as his attack took effect.
Meanwhile, Noutha raised her arms and began her own attack: a series of blinding flashes erupted over the heads of the light-sensitive gurvani, followed by a bolt of searing plasma that struck a gurvan in the center and quickly engulphed the soldiers nearby.
Noutha was correct: the gurvani within the outpost could not resist rushing out to meet the attack. As they did Tyndal’s spells cut them down, one by one or in small groups. By the time he and Noutha got close enough to use their blades hand-to-hand, there were only a few goblins left to stand . . . and they didn’t fare well. The two made short work of every gurvan within seconds, moving at warmagic-enhanced speeds.
Noutha, he noted, fought with brutal efficiency, laying out each new opponent with sharp thrusts or quick slashes of her mageblade, while using her left hand to blast away with a warwand. She never spared an enemy more time than it took to eliminate him.
Tyndal, by contrast, was flamboyant in how he dismembered his challengers. That didn’t mean he was slower – the warmage seemed to push a recovery from one attack into the beginning of another, his blade making wide but elegant sweeps as it slew.
Before they even made it to the front of the outpost, however, Atopol appeared with a bundle over his shoulder. He pushed his way past the dying goblins and slipped behind some cover. In a few moments he was standing behind Rondal, unwrapping his cloak from the captured Sky Rider’s shoulders.
“Thank you!” the girl said in a broad Wilderlands accent. “I was preparing to escape, but this was a lot easier.”
“Typical Estasi Order service,” Atopol grinned. “Fast but sloppy.”
“You’re Nattia, aren’t you? You haven’t seen Dara around anywhere, have you?” Rondal asked.
The dark-haired Rider shook her head, as she accepted a water bottle from Atopol. “No, I haven’t seen anyone since my bird went down,” she said, sorrowfully. “Third Wing was headed over to search for them when we were attacked – just as we came across them. Last I saw her, she and Fearless were going down just past the shoreline. After that I was too confounded by wyverns to pay attention to much,” she admitted, taking a swallow.
“Can you travel?”
“You mean, without my bird?” she asked, chuckling. “Yes, I can walk. I can march. I can even fight. Poor Festive! She was such a sweetheart,” she sighed, sadly.
“We’ll mourn her later, among others,” Rondal promised, as Tyndal and Noutha finished destroying the last defenders of the outpost. “Right now, we have to locate our fallen Riders and return to a more secure position. This sort of thing is fun, but our friends are getting hammered right now. We need to get back and lend them our aid.”
“I am at your command,” the Kasari girl assured him. “What can I do? They took my gear, when they took me prisoner,” she cautioned.
Atopol held up a wide leather bag. “I believe this is your bag, my lady?” he asked, politely. “It didn’t look of gurvani manufacture.”
“Oh, Ishi bless you!” she declared, grabbing the bag as Atopol blushed. “All of my equipment is in here! Except for my blade – I sort of lost that.”
“In the belly of a goblin,” Rondal nodded, retrieving the blade he’d taken from the gurvani corpse next to Festive’s from behind his belt and handing it to her. “Good work, that.”
“I never thought I’d see that again,” she said, taking the curved dagger gratefully. “Thank you!”
Rondal and Noutha walked back from the sacked outpost casually, as if they were returning from the market. “I told you a frontal assault was easiest,” Tyndal chided him, as they came within earshot.
“It accomplished the task,” he nodded. “We have our rescued prisoner. She’s well, and can travel,” he informed them.
“But to where?” Noutha asked. “Has she seen Lady Lenodara?”
“Not since she went down, but she gave me a clue of where she might be,” Rondal reported, as he began to climb back up the block of rubble he was using as a vantage point. “I think if we take a route that . . . oh. Let me get a little higher,” he said, disturbed, and began to mount a higher point on the rubble to gain a better perspective.
“He always has to actually look at stuff before he goes somewhere,” Tyndal said, shaking his head. “He can never just set off. It’s annoying.”
“It’s almost like he’s afflicted with preparation,” the Sky Rider said, sarcastically. “Byddwch yn barod!” she added in the Kasari native tongue.
“Did you happen to learn anything of value, while you were captive?” Atopol asked, conversationally, as he offered the Rider a biscuit from his pack.
“Yes, actually,” the Kasari girl said, pushing her hair out of her eyes before she bit into the biscuit. “Everyone was called out to repel
the attackers, from what I understood. Those . . . those Iron Folk were already armored, as if they were anticipating a fight,” she reported. “The gurvani were irritated about it. They wanted a Nemovort to come inspect me,” she said, shivering as she said it, “but all of the leaders had been called away.”
“It sounds like they’re throwing everything at poor Terleman,” nodded Tyndal.
Rondal made the summit of the rubble pile, where he could more clearly see the results of Tyndal and Noutha’s raid on the outpost. But he could also see a portion of the road, in the distance, the long road that connected the Temple of Korbal with the Tower of Despair, and beyond.
There was a long dark line of troops moving up the avenue, past the smoldering tower. The Dradrien troops had joined the mass of gurvani already assembled there, he noted with magesight. No doubt they and their Nemovorti leaders would fall upon poor Terleman with a fury, he reasoned.
But he also noted that the enemy forces were not marching quietly – they were being harassed.
“Good news,” he called out from his perch. “No need to search for Dara. She’s fine,” he reported.
“What?” asked Tyndal, surprised. “Did you reach her, mind-to-mind?”
“No,” Rondal said, peering into the distance. “But that’s definitely the Thoughtful Knife, slicing through those troops, and Dara is the only one who has one, to my knowledge. Or knows how to use it that effectively,” he said, admiringly, as he watched the weapon bury itself in the breastplate of one Dradrien warrior and emerge explosively from the other side.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Tyndal sighed. “I’d hate to be the one to tell Master that his senior apprentice got captured. Or splatted,” he added.
“She’s safe and sound, somewhere,” Rondal guessed. “Probably back at the southern Waypoint. We can stop searching for her, now, and get back to the fight.”
“Azar or Terleman?” Noutha asked. It didn’t appear that she had a preference.
“How about we stop back by our hidden Waypoint?” suggested Atopol. “I’d prefer to examine the field from a distance, before we plunge right in with the slaughtering and such.”
“Might as well,” Rondal shrugged, as he hopped down. “I think we’ve done about as much damage as we can, here.”
When Rondal came out of the Ways back where he’d started, he reflected on the cyclical nature of life and history and such while he discovered Dara, curled up in a corner of the clandestine cave, silently directing the Knife’s attack a few hundred yards away.
Nattia was next, along with Tyndal, and then Noutha and Atopol. The Rider immediately began fussing over the injured falcon on the perch in the corner, while Tyndal and the others began to assess the situation. There were a few Kasari rangers and a Wilderlord who’d taken refuge here, he noted – the same ones Tyndal had seen earlier that day.
That, of course, seemed like a decade ago, not a few hours.
“Back to where we started,” sighed Tyndal, echoing his thoughts. “I’m certain there’s a lesson in there, somewhere. How goes the battle?” he asked the Wilderlord who was standing as lookout.
“She’s got them pinned down, unmoving,” the knight reported with pride. “She never keeps it in one place long enough for them to draw a bead on it.”
“Secure the perimeter, and let me contact our commander,” Rondal ordered everyone. “I should know what we should do in a moment.”
He found a good seat, set back from where he’d spent the morning pelting the Tower of Despair with his crossbow, and closed his eyes. Patiently he tried to contact Terleman, mind-to-mind. To his surprise, the warmage answered almost at once.
You have her?
She’s safe and intact, reported Rondal. She grounded and apparently made her way to the hidden Waystone with her injured bird – in small form, he added. She’s using the Thoughtful Knife from here to slow the rush of forces descending on your position.
Duin bless her, then, Terleman said. Things have started to get harsh, here. I’ve withdrawn everyone back to the inner line of defense, with the rescued prisoners on the inside. So far, they’re just containing us, pushing us back with skirmishers. They haven’t engaged in force yet, but they’re just waiting.
Dara’s got about two hundred Dradrien warriors pinned down here with the Knife. Heavy infantry. Tough, Rondal assessed. And about another five, six hundred gurvani and assorted undead.
Have her keep at it for a while, Terleman ordered. You and your team stay put, for now. Except for the Kasari rangers and Azar, you’re the only other unit in play at the moment. As much as I’d welcome you here, I think we might find a better place for you later on in the battle.
We’ll stay here and wait for orders, then, Rondal agreed. Any word from Minalan? he added, trying not to sound anxious.
Not for more than an hour, at least, the warmage replied. But then, I’ve been a little busy to keep up with my correspondence. Rest up but stay ready. If I need a sudden flanking maneuver, I’ll give you a shout.
Rondal let the connection fail. He tried to relax. Despite everything hanging in the balance, despite everything going wrong on this mission, he’d been granted an unexpected and completely temporary reprieve. Unlike Noutha and Tyndal, he didn’t mind periods of enforced inactivity as much. A soldier came to expect them, even cherish them, when they happened.
He took out his pipe as he went back to inform his colleagues. “Terl wants us to stay put. Protect Dara, and prepare for action if he needs a sudden distraction in the rear of the foe, or something like that. So we have a few moments.”
“Don’t start a pot of tea,” Noutha complained, peering out of a crack toward the distant battlefield. “I have a feeling that things are about to get desperate, over there.”
“They are,” Rondal assured her. “But Terleman has enough men, for the moment. He’ll let us know when he needs us.”
“But I agree about the tea,” Tyndal nodded, producing a flask. “This is not a time for tea.”
“How in six hells are we supposed to get out of this mess?” complained Noutha, pacing as much as the small space afforded. “Without the Ways, we’re doomed.”
“They have to be piping a tremendous amount of energy to maintain the disturbance,” Rondal reasoned, as he charged the bowl of his pipe and lit it with a cantrip. “Just like they did to freeze the Poros. If we can find the source of that enchantment and disrupt it, even briefly, we can get some people away.”
“Where would he keep it?” asked Nattia, as she tended to the falcon’s wounds.
“He’s got an entire island and an entire lake to hide it in,” reasoned Atopol.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a thing that can be hid,” pointed out Rondal. “In fact . . . here, let me do some scrying,” he said, wandering off into an alcove of the artificial grotto and summoning Insight, his baculus. With the help of its powerful paraclete, he was soon able to determine at least something of the nature of the spell.
“He’s placed the entire lake canyon under the spell,” he reported, when he was done. “It’s pushed the area into a different arcane phase, I believe. There might even be some dimensional elements to the spell,” he said, more to himself than the others. “It’s not locked up with the mists, as I suspected. It’s radiating from a central point, near the center of the island.”
“We’re nowhere near the center of the island,” Noutha pointed out.
“We may not have to be, to counter the spell,” Rondal considered. “But I need more information. Like where that energy is coming from. And whether or not it’s necromantic or traditionally thaumaturgic in nature.”
“Would that make a difference?” Atopol asked, curious.
“It might,” Rondal admitted. “I don’t know. Necromantic energy depends upon the arcane power derived from the decomposition of organic matter, in theory.”
“In practice,” Noutha told him, “it can do things that thaumaturgy cannot. Thaumaturgy using vital energy,”
she amended. “When I was working with the Enshadowed I witnessed it at work, a few times. I’m no thaumaturge, but some of the things they did violated some pretty basic principles of Imperial magical practice. Including dimensional magic. Time, gravity, electromagnetism – it all behaved differently with necromancy.”
“Do you think they could use that to block the Ways?” proposed Rondal.
“Well, clearly they have,” Noutha shot back. “I told you, I’m not a thaumaturge. But field state changes were definitely one of the things they could accomplish.”
“You saw that?” Atopol asked, interested.
She snorted. “I watched one Enshadowed bastard use necromancy to age a prisoner sixty years in sixty seconds,” she boasted. “I don’t know anything in Imperial magic that can do that.”
“Neither do I,” agreed Rondal. “Let’s hope they don’t resort to such spells against our noble officers. I don’t think some of our more experienced magi could survive. Did necromancy, as you observed the Enshadowed using it, have any weaknesses?”
“Now that’s a good question,” Noutha nodded, slowly, her eyes slitted. “Those slimy little bastards were arrogant about their magical superiority over us ‘mere’ humani warmagi, but yes, there were a few occasions that stymied them.
“They got into a squabble with some of Sheruel’s priests, once, when they first started arriving in the Penumbra and throwing their weight around. Something they did prohibited the Enshadowed from raising power,” she recalled.
“What did they do?”
“I told you, I’m not a thaumaturge! It happened quickly, at the court of the Goblin King. Three shamans took offense to two Enshadowed emissaries. The Enshadowed demonstrated their power with a few necromantic-based blasts, which pissed off the locals. They responded with this spell. The Enshadowed twisted around for a few moments, impotent, until Sheruel’s Black Skulls broke it up. They still had some power, back then,” she recalled. “But if I had to guess the nature of the spell, it was some sort of arcane vibratory oscillation,” Noutha guessed.
Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Page 59
